Description: 
Join this panel for a discussion on key legal and policy developments at the intersection of seabed mining, environmental protection, and international governance. Panelists will outline the current administration's initiatives to expand seabed mining in both U.S. and international waters and discuss the potential implications for marine ecosystems.

The conversation will examine the international and domestic legal frameworks that regulate seabed mining, highlight emerging trends, and explore how existing governance structures may need to evolve. Panelists will also consider potential reforms and how new approaches could ensure responsible and sustainable management of seabed resources.

Speakers: 
Angelina Fisher, Adjunct Professor of Law and Director of Policy & Practice at the Guarini Law & Tech Initiative, New York University School of Law
Erik Van de Stouwe, Senior Oceans Attorney, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)
Mahlet N. Mesfin, Ph.D., Nonresident Fellow, Stimson Center & Former Deputy Assistant Secretary, Ocean, Fisheries, and Polar Affairs, U.S. Department of State
Oliver Wright, Partner, DLA Piper

Moderator:
Corey Tam, New York City Law Department, Environmental Law Division 

Sponsoring Committees:
International Law, Victoria Pochtar, Chair
Environmental Law, John Rousakis and Jullee Kim, Co-Chairs

Event information and Registration

The Institute for International Law and Justice invites you to a timely conversation on the changing state of international governance amid escalating conflict in various world regions, the growing entanglement of corporate actors as well as the rapid integration of artificial intelligence into domestic security and geopolitical strategy. The talk explores how these developments are reshaping authority, accountability, and power across public, private, and hybrid domains. Yet it also highlights a quieter continuity: despite public contestation and political strain, many institutionalized systems of ordering — and the everyday practices of cooperative governance — continue to sustain much of contemporary globalized life.

Speakers Helmut Aust, MJ Durkee, James Gathii, Martti Koskenniemi, and Sarah Nouwen.

RSVP here.

The International Law and International Justice Seminar will convene for a public session to
discuss a joint project by the guest speakers, Alejandro Rodiles (Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México) and Helmut Aust (Freie Universität Berlin). Papers will be available one week in advance.

Join the European Legal Society's event on Wednesday March 4th from 1:10 - 2:25 PM in Vanderbilt Hall 216 (VH 216) (40 Washington Square S, New York, NY 10012). Register here.

This event brings together;

• Gaelin Rosenwaks, marine scientist, explorer, and ocean advocate; 

• Dr. François Bailet, Senior Legal Officer at the United Nations Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea; and

• Prof. Angelina Fisher, Adjunct Professor of Law and Director of Policy & Practice at the Guarini Law & Tech Initiative, NYU.

If you are interested in the ocean, from conducting marine research and fieldwork, including close encounters with whales, to shaping the legal and policy frameworks that govern marine activities, this conversation is for you. The panel will explore how scientific research, practical field experience, international law, and governance intersect in a rapidly changing world. Topics include deep-sea mining, climate change, technological innovation, and the evolving political and financial dynamics shaping ocean governance today.

Lunch will be provided! 

·       Introductions

·       Individual presentations/pitch (10 minutes each, approx. 1:15–1:45 / 1:50)

1.     Gaelin Rosenwaks

2.     François Bailet

3.     Angelina Fisher

·       Moderated panel discussion (25 minutes, 1:45–2:10), moderated by Prof. Angelina Fisher

·       Audience Q&A (2:10–2:25)

·       Closing

Marco Germanò presented research on accountability and responsibility in open-source AI systems at the Wharton AI Accountability Lab, Wharton Business School, Philadelphia, US. This is the same work that was later presented at RAILS in Barcelona.

Dr. David Grinspoon, Senior Scientist for the Planetary Science Institute and Astrobiology Strategy at NASA will present "NASA, Science, and the Extraterritorial Life Debates: Astrobiology and the Public.”

This is part of the public speaker sessions for IILJ Colloquium: Space and Planetary Law & Governance.

Mary Mitchell (New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers Newark) will discuss issues in Pacific nuclear testing. Mitchell's work centers on the intersections of science and technology with law and environmental social movements in the nuclear era. Focusing on radiological risk, her research examines the production of environmental inequality in the United States and transnationally.

This is part of the public speaker sessions for IILJ Colloquium: Space and Planetary Law & Governance.

Professor Marcel Agüeros is Professor of Astronomy at Columbia University and the incoming president of the American Astronomical Society. He will discuss some of the negative consequences of the increasing number of satellites humans are putting in space, and how these harms might be addressed. The session also will consider how environmental concerns might be incorporated into space law and policy generally. 

This is part of the public speaker sessions for IILJ Colloquium: Space and Planetary Law & Governance.

Organised at the European University Institute and chaired by Thomas Streinz, this seminar focused on the findings of the EU Sovereign Tech Fund feasibility study and broader questions about the governance and sustainability of Europe’s open digital infrastructure. The session brought together experts from OpenForum Europe, GitHub, the Sovereign Tech Agency, and academia to discuss strategic investment models, funding mechanisms, and Europe’s role in shaping the future of open digital infrastructure.

Find more event information here.

Marco Germanò presented a paper on open-source AI liability, which was selected as one of the top three graduate papers of the conference. The discussion offered perspective on how AI liability debates are unfolding in academic and technical communities and informed further development of the work.

Fiind more event information here.

Dr. MacDonald served as NASA’s first chief economist. In this role, he helped to establish NASA’s Moon to Mars strategy and Artemis and served as the program executive for the International Space Station National Laboratory. He is recognized as an expert on U.S. space policy and private-sector space activities. Dr. MacDonald will discuss topics related to the public-private interface in space policy in the US, the way NASA interfaces with private companies through procurement, and the use of policy and economic analysis at NASA.

This is part of the public speaker sessions for IILJ Colloquium: Space and Planetary Law & Governance.

Planetary-scale phenomena can threaten human (and more-than-human) livability. Responding to ongoing changes in the ecological environment requires thinking across disciplinary and legal boundaries, re-evaluating relationships between humans and more-than-human actants within ecosystems, and taking seriously the tensions between local experiences and planetary systems as well as between short-term cycles and long-term horizons.

The one-day event held during New York Climate Week, will interrogate how planetary thinking can reorient laws, knowledge-making practices, and financing arrangements towards just interventions for our collective ability to sustain and improve common life.

This event is co-organized by NYU School of Law, The Biodiversity and Ecosystems Services Network (BES-Net) Consortium, Soka Gakkai International, SwedBio, and the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN) and supported by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Secretariat.

Pre-register here.

The NYU Space Talks lecture series is back in its tenth season.

Martin J. Collins (1951–2025) was a pioneering historian of Cold War science, global communications, and the cultural politics of space exploration. As a longtime curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and editor of History and Technology, Collins championed scholarship that crossed disciplinary and geographic boundaries. His work brought critical attention to infrastructure, systems thinking, and the transnational flows of information, capital, and power that defined the late twentieth century. This roundtable brings together colleagues and collaborators to reflect on the wide-ranging impact of Collins' research – from work on extensive oral history projects, to curatorial practice, to studies of globalization, satellites, and surveillance – and to explore how his legacy continues to shape contemporary approaches to history, science and technology in both scholarly and public contexts.

Featuring: John Krige (Georgia Institute of Technology), Teasel Muir-Harmony (Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum), James Schwoch (Northwestern University), James Merle Thomas (Helen Frankenthaler Foundation) and Adelheid Voskuhl (University of Pennsylvania)
Chair: Alexander Geppert (New York University/NYU Shanghai)


Everybody is cordially welcome but advance registration is necessary. To do so, please consult space-talks.com. All NYU Space Talks are live conversations, and recordings will not be shared afterwards.

Professor Barton Beebe is John M. Desmarais Professor of Intellectual Property Law at NYU Law, co-director of the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy, and a co-director of the Competition, Innovation, and Information Law LLM Program. Professor Beebe will talk about his new writing on technological change and the recurring thinking of death of law. The discussion will focus on Part II of the project on outer space, cyberspace, and technospace.

This is part of the public speaker sessions for IILJ Colloquium: space and Planetary Law & Governance.

Dr Haris Durrani, JD, PhD (Princeton) is judicial clerk in the Federal Circuit 2024-25; an incoming Harvard History and Economics post-doc on satellite history. Dr Durrani will present ideas from his recently-completely History doctoral thesis on earth satellite programs in the 1960s. Haris Durrani has also contributed to literature on SciFi concerning space and other worlds. We read his short 2021 article, 'Frank Herbert, the Republican Salafist', about the political thought of the author of Dune (1965).

This is part of the public speaker sessions for IILJ Colloquium: space and Planetary Law & Governance.

Professor Weinzierl, is Senior Associate Dean and Chair of the MBA Program at Harvard Business School, where he is the Joseph and Jacqueline Elbling Professor of Business Administration in the Business, Government, and the International Economy Unit.  His research focuses on the optimal design of economic policy, in particular taxation. This year he published a book, Space to Grow:  Unlocking the Final Economic Frontier (with Brendan Rosseau), about the commercialization of space. 

This is part of the public speaker sessions for IILJ Colloquium: space and Planetary Law & Governance.

Marco Germanò presented research findings on open-source AI liability at the Innovation Policy Colloquium at NYU, convened by Professors Katherine Strandburg and Ignacio Cofone. The colloquium brought together scholars working on innovation and AI policy and provided an opportunity to discuss questions of governance in AI ecosystems.

Professor Akhil Rao is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Middlebury College who has recently been the Acting Chief Economist in NASA's Office of Technology, Policy and Strategy. Professor Rao is going to speak about "how government actors could vs do shape behaviors in space."  He will be discussing several space policy questions to illuminate the gap between how governmental actors are influencing behavior in space and how they could do so in his opinion, such as policy questions around space constellations and debris. 

This is part of the public speaker sessions for IILJ Colloquium: space and Planetary Law & Governance.

Professor Alejandro Rodiles (ITAM, Mexico) will talk about the idea of ‘charter cities’ as a daring illustration of recent trends in urban development thinking, and the role of cities and local governance in international development.

This is part of the guest speaker sessions for Global Infrastructure and Tech Law Seminar.

Professor Lisa Ruth Rand is a historian of technology, science, and the environment who tends to gravitate toward extreme natures and broken things. Rand will discuss the environmental history of outer space, and in conversation with Professor Alejandro Rodiles (ITAM, Mexico) on planetary thinking.

This is part of the public speaker sessions for IILJ Colloquium: space and Planetary Law & Governance.

Open-source software (OSS) is source code developed by a global village of programmers for anyone to use anywhere, for any purpose. Ms. Jennifer Tridgell (Cambridge, UK) will talk about her doctoral research on global governance of free and open source software.

This is part of the guest speaker sessions for Global Infrastructure and Tech Law Seminar.

Expert Esther Brimmer from the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force will present Task Force Report No. 82: Securing Space – A Plan for U.S. Action. She will explore the United States' role in emerging space governance, with a particular focus on Low-Earth Orbit, where thousands of commercial satellites—many operated by American companies—are in operation.

This is part of the public speaker sessions for IILJ Colloquium: space and Planetary Law & Governance.