Towards the end of my first year of law school I, like most of my classmates, attended a meeting in preparation for the writing competition. The writing competition is used for the law journals at Cornell to select their associates for the next year. At this meeting all the journals gave a brief presentation and distributed a handout providing information on their journal; during the presentation for one of the journals, I noticed that when they formed they originally funded themselves with a bake sale. This struck me as an excellent idea, and I decided I wanted to start my own law journal, The Cornell Journal of Space Law, which I would fund by selling cookies shaped like rocket ships, the sun, etc. (if this idea failed it was suggested to me that I should solicit Richard Branson for funds). While I never followed through with this idea, I do actually remain very interested in space law as a field, and many law students still approach me to discuss or joke about space law.

My interest in space law was reignited last week. On Friday, NASA announced that it had discovered water on the moon, opening “a new chapter” that could allow for the development of a lunar space station. This finding obviously opens a new chapter in our understanding of the moon, and NASA announced that this discovery “could hold a key to the history and evolution of the solar system, much as an ice core sample taken on Earth reveals ancient data.” The discovery of water on the moon also opens up very basic questions that not many people stop to consider, most notably, “who owns the moon.” When I’m asked what space law even is, this is one of the first examples I always use. Who, if anyone, claims to own the moon? Who is recognized as owning the moon? Can anyone own the moon? While these questions may seem silly or trivial, the idea of eventually adding a permanent lunar base, or mining the moon for resources makes them surprisingly relevant.

The answer to the question of who owns the moon, of course, is no one. The Outer Space Treaty, the international law signed by more than 100 countries (including the United States), states that the moon and other celestial bodies are the province of all mankind, however, like most simple answers this one contains several complications. At the time the United Nations drafted the Outer Space Treaty there were only two spacefaring nations, the United States and the Soviet Union. We now have over a dozen, and many of them, China, Russia, the U.S., India and Japan, want to go to the moon. The commercial space sector is also becoming extremely interested in Earth’s only natural satellite with companies considering everything from mining the lunar surface to building extraterrestrial resorts on it.

A further complication comes from the simple fact that the Outer Space Treaty is not the only treaty that governs international affairs in space. There are currently five such treaties, and two of them, the Outer Space Treaty and the 1979 Moon Agreement deal with lunar law. The Moon Agreement builds upon the Outer Space Treaty but also says that any natural resources found on the moon are part of “the common heritage of mankind” — in other words, natural resources found on the moon must be shared. As mentioned however, while more than 100 countries have signed the Outer Space Treaty, only 13 have approved the Moon Agreement, and while the Outer Space Treaty was signed by the United States, China, Russia, India and Japan, the Moon Agreement was signed by non-spacefaring countries like Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Uruguay and Mexico. This fact clearly does not mean that countries like the United States are free to make a lunar land rush, as they are still bound by the fundamental provisions of the Outer Space Treaty, but these treaties don’t really have any teeth in terms of enforcement and act more as agreements on principle.

I believe the question of “who owns the moon” is one of many questions that people will soon need to begin thinking more seriously about. As more discoveries are made, and technology continues to improve there seems to be little question that we will attempt to exploit the moon’s natural resources, who will make money from this, and how they will make money from this are certainly questions worthy of time and law schools have not ignored this. The University of Nebraska’s College of Law began offering the United States’ first LLM in Space and Telecom Law last year, more schools will certainly follow suit, or at minimum begin offering courses in this field as it becomes increasingly more relevant and complex.

Richard Elkind is a third-year law student and executive editor of the Journal of Law and Public Policy. Barely Legal, a column featuring a rotating cast of law students that appears alternate Fridays this semester.