The role of 'soft law' in public international law and its relevance to the International Legal Regulation of Outer Space

In its simplest form, public international law can be described as the corpus of legal rules that bind States in their International relationships with each other, giving rise to both rights and obligations. It has derived in its current form from the ‘law of nations’ as espoused by scholars such as Grotius, and is based on the notions of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the State. Over the centuries, public international law has continued to evolve from its rather modest beginnings as (what has been described as) a pseudo Western Christian concept, to a truly universal set of rules that regulates all types of (international) activities taking place across the entire breadth of the Earth.