‘Space Pirates’? Navigating Criminal Jurisdiction in Outer Space

If someone commits an act of violence for private purposes in space, does that make them a ’space pirate’?

Some of the first modules of commercial space stations are expected to be launched this year and next year. There have already been over 30 non-government spaceflight participants, depending on how you define them. It seems inevitable that there will be some acts of violence for private purposes in the space domain in the foreseeable future. How would criminal jurisdiction work in that case?

Duncan Blake, Michelle Chase and I wrote an article on this topic for the SciTech Lawyer periodical published by the American Bar Association.

You can access it here if you’re a member: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/science_technology/resources/scitech-lawyer/2025-summer/space-pirates-or-misplaced-labels-navigating-criminal-jurisdiction-commercial-space-stations/

Published in The SciTech Lawyer, Volume 21, Number 4, Summer 2025. © 2025 American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.