The National Space Society (NSS) is pleased to announce the creation of the NSS Legal Fellows program, an unprecedented opportunity for exceptional law students with a passion for space and international law. The mission of the NSS Legal Fellows program is to provide gifted and highly motivated law students with a national platform to make their voices and ideas heard in respect to the continuing evolution of international and national space law. As a starting point, the NSS Legal Fellows will comment on, and provide legal analysis of, NSS policy and position papers, encouraging and facilitating innovation of ideas and strategies. NSS Legal Fellows will also have the opportunity to introduce new and original concepts and views supporting—and even hastening—the development of sustainable and successful human communities in space.

The NSS Legal Fellows are mentored by space lawyer, and Chair of the NSS International Committee, Michelle Hanlon. Hanlon is the Co-Director of the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi School of Law, as well as a member of the NSS Policy Committee. She is also the Co-Founder and President of For All Moonkind, the only organization in the world dedicated to protecting human heritage in space, starting with Tranquility Base, the site that hosts humankind’s very first offworld bootprint. Hanlon will be working with the NSS Executive Committee and the NSS Policy Committee to assure there is an open channel of communication that will allow for a vibrant exchange of ideas. Indeed, a secondary goal of the NSS Legal Fellows program is to provide the next generation of lawyers with the experience, knowledge and background they need to fully support the unfettered growth of the space industry as space law, and commercial space law in particular, evolve and mature.

The inaugural class of NSS Legal Fellows is made up of 16 law students from across the United States. Over the next year, they will be sharing ideas and encouraging discussion through the NSS Legal Fellows blog and multiple social media platforms. NSS Legal Fellows serve for staggered two-year terms starting and ending in August. NSS will invite applications for the 2021 cohort of Legal Fellows beginning in June 2021. For more information, contact [email protected].

Please join us in welcoming our very first NSS Legal Fellows!

• Jessica Andrews
• Jessica Berger
• Michael Bokeno
• Laura Brady
• Leana Brown
• Caleb Coleman
• Bailey  Cunningham
• Nestor Delgado
• Charles Ellzey
• Kapule Gray
• Grant Haas
• Sarah Mirs
• Samuel Ostrow
• Christiana Paissios
• Fisher Smith
• Sam Thorpe