The National Center for Remote Sensing, Air and Space Law and the Journal of Space Law with the International Institute of Space Law will host the sixth Eilene M. Galloway Symposium on Critical Issues in Space Law in Washington, D.C., Dec. 1.

The symposium, titled, "A Comparative Look at National Space Laws and their International Implications" will feature 13 speakers from around the world and will examine the global implications of recent national space laws implemented by several countries.

A number of countries, including Japan and France, have long had a presence in space but have only recently passed national laws regulating their space activities.

"For most nations, space law started at an international level fifty years ago," said professor Joanne Irene Gabrynowicz, director of the National Center for Remote Sensing, Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi. "Treaties were negotiated in the United Nations in the late 1950s.

The U.S. passed its first space law in 1958. Some nations have used parts of U.S. law as a model. But today, most of the legislation is being passed by individual states.

This symposium will be a platform to review those national space laws with the leading space law experts from their representative nations."

Legal representatives from Belgium, China, France, Germany, Korea, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States will present. The symposium will be held Dec. 1 at the Cosmos Club, 2121 Massachusetts Avenue, NW in Washington, D.D., from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.