Randall Benchley hadn't had much success. He had presented his brief on the Asteroid Belt to the jurisdictional court but had been stymied to bring the issue to a resolution. On Earth, the UN still controlled all matters relating to Space Law and it was not an easy bureaucracy to navigate. Randall had thought himself equal to the task but now he wasn't sure. Somewhere there were parties that weren't observing procedure but were obfuscating the whole process.
Randall needed to come up with a reason that would discourage any but those in the Belt from claiming rights. He had an idea but it was quite a leap. A bit of a desperate gamble of which he would normally take no part in, but he owed it to Abram to try.
Randall proposed to file a new brief in which he would claim that if as is asserted by some scientific experts the Asteroid Belt was a failed planet, either broken up or prevented from forming by Jupiter, then the Belt was the space equivalent of a shipwreck on the open seas. And if this was posited then Maritime Law as regards salvage operations would by analogy apply to asteroids in the Belt.
Now if Randall could make this assertion seem reasonable he could spring the trap. If the Belt could be considered as a wrecked ship then anyone recovering material from asteroids would in effect be salvaging. Maritime Common Law required that such a person would be recompensed either by the recovery itself or by the owner of the recovered article, in this case, asteroid material.
With this argument, Randall hoped that the Belt would become a less enticing land grab for Earth's governments and corporations. Rather they would see the asteroids as a liability which could be quite an expensive responsibility should anyone but themselves claim and recover. Most asteroids of any size were estimated to have billions of dollars of salable, salvageable elements and organic compounds.
The fact that there were already several asteroid miners prospecting the Belt could prove to be the decisive argument. Should any of them begin recovery (mining) operations then they would in effect be salvaging if Randall's brief was sustained. No government or corporation would be willing to pay the likely recovery fees that such Belt miners would demand. The Belt would in effect be res nullis, the hoped-for outcome.
Randall would begin to prepare such a brief. At the same time, he would inform his Martian contact, Lawson, of the advantages of having the Belt miners begin their mining procedures as soon as possible.
Randall hoped Abram would have been pleased.
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