Incatena customary international law

[Civil War Bugle]

I took a class on the law of the sea recently, and was re-perusing the incatena page even more recently (i.e. it's open in another browser tab as I type) and the question popped into my mind of how much continuity there is between customary international law of the present and customary interstellar law of the future?

Three categories enter my mind...
1. There's plenty of references to treaties on the Incatena page and treaties are not customary law but can morph into public law for various reasons... the USA and a few other countries party to a major sea treaty and everyone argues their position as to whether any particular part of the treaty has also become customary law in addition to being positive law for the signatories.
2. Space law will have had a lot more time to develop than it has in 2024.
3. The influence of aliens on interstellar customary law... e.g. the rule against interfering with primitive non-spacefaring species.

Then there's the question of whether the people of 4901 even consider there to be any law other than treaties and other formal mechanism which is binding on an interstellar level.

This may be a more technical question than deserves attention for the setting but the thought popped into my head to inquire.

[zompist]

Sure... the Incatena is based on a treaty (2684), and all its powers derive from that. It's not a government and technically can't make laws, but there isn't a huge difference between laws, regulations, treaty interpretations, and protocols.

The overwhelming constraint of the Incatena is that there is no such thing as interstellar enforcement. Another star system can never make you do anything. This isn't because of any ideals, it's because of the speed of light, and the insane energy requirements for interstellar travel.

That doesn't mean the Treaty is toothless, but it does mean that 99% of enforcement is by the member planets. And post-Collapse human society tends to believe in treaties and protocols. You don't want to be known as a bad actor— you want to stay in touch, to keep up with advancements in science and culture and the economy (even if what is traded is mostly ideas). And it's in everyone's interest to follow protocols, such as data encodings and the metric system.

And yes, I'd say that more advanced species have very strongly communicated that prohibition on interference with "primitive" planets.

I'm not sure if this answers your question, but there is continuity but also normal change. After all, we have continuity in many ways with ancient Babylon: we still use 360° circles, the idea of debt and interest and money, even the astrological signs. The very ideas of law, ambassadors, treaties, and even extraterritoriality go back 5000 years.

You could say the same about the Incatena. E.g., there's very likely the idea that the captain of a spaceship has ultimate decisionmaking authority... just as on a seagoing vessel 7000 years previously. The Incatena includes agencies or powers inherited from the UN, which itself incorporates previous conventions and agencies.

I'd also add that Incatena personnel are, of course, bound by Incatena law. That includes the Interfleet but also what is by now a pretty large staff of analysts and regulators, based mostly on Mars and Sihor. If you're an Agent, you take the Boss's guidelines very seriously. But the speed of light also means that Agents have a very large amount of independence and discipline, if needed, can take decades.

[sasasha]

This was interesting, though I don’t know much about the Incatena.

The very ideas of law, ambassadors, treaties, and even extraterritoriality go back 5000 years.

You could say the same about the Incatena. E.g., there's very likely the idea that the captain of a spaceship has ultimate decisionmaking authority... just as on a seagoing vessel 7000 years previously. The Incatena includes agencies or powers inherited from the UN, which itself incorporates previous conventions and agencies.

As a corollary, the Tenerife Airport disaster of 1977 was instrumental in the development of Crew Resource Management as a global standard training procedure in aviation and related industries; this is a protocol that challenges that millennia-old notion, and tries to ensure that captains can be appropriately challenged where necessary.

The Incatena have presumably had their fair share of disasters to hone standard practice. And it’s quite a short hop from there to law, I think.

[Civil War Bugle]

That does seem along the lines of what I expected… interesting that Sihor has as high a presence of analysts, I was thinking they were primarily on Mars except for embassy staff and field agents for whatever reason.

[zompist]

interesting that Sihor has as high a presence of analysts, I was thinking they were primarily on Mars except for embassy staff and field agents for whatever reason.

Sihor is the most populated planet, and it would be extremely inconvenient to wait 24 years for an answer if need something.

[Civil War Bugle]

interesting that Sihor has as high a presence of analysts, I was thinking they were primarily on Mars except for embassy staff and field agents for whatever reason.

Sihor is the most populated planet, and it would be extremely inconvenient to wait 24 years for an answer if need something.

It totally makes sense, I was kind of forgetting about the existence of Sihor.