Air & Space Law

The first air law dates back to 1784 and was a police directive governing balloon flights. The legal framework of air law quickly transcended national borders with international air transport. As a result, two types of agreements were developed: private law conventions governing relations between private parties, and public law conventions governing relations between States.

Between April and November 1908, at least ten German balloons crossed the border to land in France while carrying more than twenty-five airmen. France wished to avoid diplomatic incidents and proposed to settle the problems of international flights by an international conference on air navigation, held in Paris in 1910.

This conference was the first formulation of the principles of international law relating to air navigation. However, it failed on the thorny issue of the right of foreign aircraft to fly over the territory of another country. In 1919, the Paris Peace Conference charged an Allied Aviation Commission to draft a Convention on International Civil Aviation in Time of Peace. Aviation had become a subject of international law. The Paris Convention and the CINA entered into force in 1922. Without the United States.

Another attempt to codify air law at the regional level resulted in the Convention on Commercial Aviation in Havana on 20 January 1928. It allowed United States airlines to operate freely in North and South America.

On 7 December 1944, the signing of the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation and its annexes represented a major step in the development of international air law. It created first a Provisional International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and then a definitive organization, ICAO, based in Montreal. The Chicago Convention replaced the Paris and Havana Conventions.