Today, the most frequently noted quote from the space shuttle and the Mir astronauts is how there is a significant lack of boundaries as seen from space. A concept such as national sovereignty is benign in space, but the inhabitants of Earth still carry on their everyday existence with wars over which boundary is correct, which people should rule a piece of land, and which people should die because they happen to occupy the land. Very often there are differences as to who should own the property or whether the prices in a shop are too exorbitant. Justice needs to be served. At this point people design governments to ensure that justice based on reasonable laws which in turn are based upon the society's value system are enforced.
Countries are macroscopic models of small communities.
Even though some countries still choose war, a number of nations have chosen to bring their cases before the United Nations to settle their differences. It is in this backdrop that Space Law was formed. After the first satellites were launched, there was great concern in the United Nations over whether or not the two military super powers at the time, the United States and the Soviet Union, would fight a final battle for world domination from the heavens. Obviously, nobody wanted geothermal nuclear war being fought over their heads, so the U.N. set up a committee in 1958 to prevent such actions. Currently, there are 54 nations in this committee and since treaties dealing with the matters of outer space must be approved by consensus, this process is getting unwieldy.