As soon as their paths crossed at Stanford Law School, Samantha Potter, JD ’25, and Cody Chenxi Wang, JD ’27, recognized that they were both drawn by the same gravitational pull: a determination to propel space law forward.
Potter, who came to Stanford Law from the U.S. Air Force, had long been fascinated by the vast possibilities of space as a new arena for human activity and responsibility. Wang, who started law school after working at the intersection of technology and policy, was equally intrigued by how the rapid surge of space ventures would expand—and test the boundaries of—existing legal frameworks.
Potter and Wang joined forces to launch the Stanford Space Law Society (SSLS) in 2024, along with Kalon Joseph Boston, JD ’25; Ruchira Naik, LLM ’25; and Radhey Soundarya Gnanesh, LLM ’25. An interdisciplinary mix of eager students, from law to astrophysics to engineering, joined the group and within a year, SSLS grew to over 70 members and over 600 LinkedIn subscribers, making it one of the largest student-led space law groups in the country—possibly the universe.
“At one of our early meetings, Radhey said, ‘We should start a journal. We need a permanent platform to showcase scholarship and commentary,’” recalls Potter, who remains on the SSLS advisory board post-graduation and now serves as a Judge Advocate in the Air Force. “The immediate reaction was, ‘Wow, that’s going to be a lot of work.’ But we decided to make it happen.”
The result is Stanford Space Law and Policy Perspectives, the nation’s first student-run space law publication. It debuted in August with five articles, including a deep dive into “Who Takes the Trash Out in Space?” and an analysis of “Leveraging Artificial Intelligence to Empower Intelligence Analysis in the Space Domain.” Potter co-authored “How Silicon Valley’s Satellites Can Be Targeted” with fellow Judge Advocate Lt. Col. Matthew Zellner, while Wang wrote the lead piece introducing the publication and explaining the need for the new forum.
Stanford Space Law and Policy Perspectives, he emphasizes, is not a traditional law review-type repository, nor a news site chasing daily headlines. Instead, it aims for a middle ground: short- to medium-length pieces—academically rigorous but accessible—written by a mix of lawyers, students, policy experts, and technologists.
“We wanted a cadence fast enough to respond to new developments, but thoughtful enough to add value,” Wang says.
Stanford Law School lecturer Erik Jensen and Dinsha Mistree, an affiliate of the Neukom Center for the Rule of Law and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, are serving as advisors to SSLS.
Learn More About the Stanford Space Law Society
