Space Law Course Taught by Law School Fellow and Adjunct Matthew Hersch, JD, PhD

The Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology at the Seton Hall University School of Law is proud to announce the appointment of Matthew H. Hersch, JD, PhD to serve as Fellow and Adjunct Professor of Law for the Institute.  Dr. Hersch is the Associate of the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University and has just served as the Samuel I. Golieb Fellow in Legal History at New York University School of Law.  Hersch has developed a Space Law course that will be taught in the Law School’s Weekend Program this Spring.  The course will examine the field of space law: its mandates, limits, and open questions in the United States and around the world.  Students will be challenged by such pressing issues as technologies of ownership, liability and duty to other spacefaring nations, the legal concepts that will govern humanity’s future in space, interplanetary travel, and even space settlement and contact with extraterrestrial life.  In addition to being introduced to the global history of space exploration, students will be able to understand the fundamental claims and disputes that have given rise to the development of space law.  Dr. Hersch will also be integral in organizing and executing an academic conference held at the Law School on space cybersecurity that will be held in Spring 2026.

Dr. Hersch is a leading educator and scholar on the history of science, technology, risk, law, and engineering ethics. He received his SB in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, his JD from New York University School of Law, and his AM and PhD in the History and Sociology of Science from the University of Pennsylvania.  During that time, he held a Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum and a History of Science Society/National Aeronautics and Space Administration Fellowship in the History of Space Science. He has held faculty appointments in Penn’s School of Arts and Sciences, School of Engineering and Applied Science, and College of Liberal and Professional Studies and the University of Southern California.

He is the author of Dark Star: A New History of the Space Shuttle (MIT Press, 2023), Inventing the American Astronaut (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), co-author of A Social History of American Technology, 2nd Edition (Oxford University Press, 2018), and co-editor of War and Peace in Outer Space: Ethical and Legal Boundaries (Oxford University Press, 2021).

“Coming off the heels of recent scientific, philanthropic, commercial and military space activities, space law is continuing to emerge as a topic requiring the attention of the next generation of legal minds,” said David Opderbeck, JD, PhD, Professor at Seton Hall Law and Co-Director of the Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology. ”Dr. Hersch brings a wealth of expertise and a breadth of experience to the fields of space law and space cybersecurity, which will enable Seton Hall University School of Law students to comprehend and confront the demands of this burgeoning field.”