During the spring of 1956, Cooper met with ACC chairman Louis S. Rothschild.[1] Because of that meeting, Ronald C. Kinsey, secretary of the ACC Legal Division, requested answers to the following questions:
Should the ACC consider and recommend US positions re-outer atmospheric space in relation to sovereignty problems raised by use of present and future rockets and missiles?
Could a legal panel be useful?
When a US position is determined should there be an international convention?[2]
Kinsey noted that in addition to Cooper, Oscar Schachter, C. Wilfred Jenks, and Andrew J. Haley (director and general counsel of the American Rocket Society)[3] had proposed the above questions given that Cooper and others had placed the general subject of outer space sovereignty on the agenda for the Tenth Session of the World Assembly of the ICAO to be held in Caracas, Venezuela, in June 1956.[4] On 7 March 1956 the Legal Division met and considered these questions, With the Air Force representative strongly concurring, the division concluded that “the problems posed by Mr. Cooper’s questions involve extremely important policy as well as legal considerations, Security aspects, and the possible need for a non-traditional type of approach, would make it imperative that the matter be kept flexible pending further study by the United States.”[5]
The ACC Legal Division further concluded that consideration of the issues by an international body was premature and that the United States should consider the important policy problems within its own government prior to endorsing such international action. Finally, the division recommended that the US object to even the study of the matter by an international body as being premature. These recommendations did not sway Cooper and he pressed his position to the point that, in an April press release, the ICAO announced the need for an international agreement on outer space sovereignty.[6] Air Force officials perceived that Cooper was “agitating” for an international convention on outer space.[7] As a result, US government officials became concerned that not
- ↑ Rothschild served concurrently as under secretary of commerce.
- ↑ Ronald C. Kinsey, secretary, Legal Division, memorandum, subject: Treatment of the Problem of Sovereignty and Associated Legal Privileges and Rights in Regard to the Use Of Outer Space by Nations, 7 March 1956 (hereafter Kinsey memo).
- ↑ Jenks was an associate of Cooper’s at the Institute of International Law, whose thesis proposed sovereignty as high as three hundred miles above the earth’s surface. In contrast, Haley appeared to argue that sovereignty extended into areas traversed by any proposed satellite.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ ACC Legal Division, to ACC executive secretary, draft memorandum, subject: Legal Treatment of the Problem of Sovereignty and Associated Legal Privileges and Rights in Regard to the Use of “Outer Space” by Nations, 12 March 1956, 1. This memorandum summarizes Legal Division agreements reached at its 7 March 1956 meeting. Kinsey memo cited at note 11 is attached to the ACC memorandum dated 12 March 1956.
- ↑ News Release, L. C. Boussard, public information officer, International Civil Aviation Organization, Montreal, Canada, 4 April 1956.
- ↑ Maj Hamilton DeSaussure, memorandum for file, AFCJA, 7 May 1956.
