The Evolution of the Outer Space Treaty

An announcement was made on 8 December 1966, that agreement had been achieved among the members of the twenty-eight nation United Nations Outer Space Commitee on the text of a treaty establishing principles governing the activities of states in the exploration and use of outer space, the moon, and other celestial bodies. Approval of the Treaty was recommended unanimously by the Political Committee of the General Assembly on 17 December 1966. Two days later, the Treaty was endorsed by a unanimous vote of the General Assembly. Regardless of the total number of States which may sign and ratify the Treaty, a remarkable endeavor of great significance to international law and politics has reached fruition. Nations often in conflict with one another and adhering to widely divergent political philosophies have agreed on the first Treaty of general applicability governing activity in outer space. The principles set forth in the Treaty had been advanced previously in the form of General Assembly resolutions, analogous international agreements, domestic legislation, statements by government officials, articles by scholars in the field and other expressions of views. However, agreement on the Treaty was primarily the product of the labors of the twenty-eight member Legal Subcommittee of the United Nations General Assembly\u27s Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space during the Subcommittee\u27s Fifth Session held in Geneva from 12 July to 4 August 1966, and in New York from 12 to 16 September 1966. The few issues requiring resolution subsequent to the conclusion of the Fifth Session were the subject of various bilateral negotiations and other discussions held during the Twenty-First Session of the General Assembly. Agreement was obtained on those issues shortly before the 8 December announcement that agreement on the Treaty as a whole had been reached. This paper will first consider briefly the expressions of views, international agreements and other events prior to the Fifth Session, which are pertinent to the establishment of principles governing exploration and use of outer space and celestial bodies. The critical events immediately prior to the Fifth Session will be summarized. Considerable attention will then be devoted to the two draft treaties introduced at the outset of the Fifth Session, and the discussions and amendments of those drafts which culminated in the agreed upon text which was announced, in final form, on 8 December 1966

The Treaty on Rescue and Return of Astronauts and Space Objects

On December 19, 1967, the General Assembly of the United Nations by a vote of 115-0 approved an Agreement on the Rescue of Astronauts, the Return of Astronauts, and the Return of Objects Launched in Outer Space ; requested the Depositary Governments to open the Agreement for signature and ratification at the earliest possible date ; and expressed its hope for the widest possible adherence to this Agreement. This approval by the General Assembly marked the climax of almost a decade of efforts to secure widespread international agreement on procedures assuring the humanitarian and scientific objectives of the rescue of astronauts in distress, their return, and the return of space objects. It is the purpose of this paper to trace the development of the Assistance and Return Agreement, and to examine the text of its various provisions in order to provide some understanding of the rights and obligations created thereby

Measuring the biases in self-reported disability status: evidence from aggregate data

Self-reported health status measures are generally used to analyse Social Security Disability Insurance's (SSDI) application and award decisions as well as the relationship between its generosity and labour force participation. Due to endogeneity and measurement error, the use of self-reported health and disability indicators as explanatory variables in economic models is problematic. We employ county-level aggregate data, instrumental variables and spatial econometric techniques to analyse the determinants of variation in SSDI rates and explicitly account for the endogeneity and measurement error of the self-reported disability measure. Two surprising results are found. First, it is shown that measurement error is the dominating source of the bias and that the main source of measurement error is sampling error. Second, results suggest that there may be synergies for applying for SSDI when the disabled population is larger.