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1 George Gleason Bogert, Problems in Aviation Law 1 (1920s)

handle is hein.space/pbavtlw0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Reprinted from The Cornell Law Quarterly. Problems In Aviation Law By GEORGE GLEASON BOGERT' Legislation on the subject of aerial navigation is impending. Flying and the manufacture of aircraft have become businesses of im- portance, but the rules of law which govern aviation remain uncer- tain. It is said that there are about 2200 aeroplanes in commercial use in the United States and about 500 more privately owned, that 92 companies are engaged in operating and nearly twice as many in manufacturing aircraft, that about $40,000,000 is invested in the industry, and that in this country in the past twenty months machines have flown 14,000,000 miles.2 Government aviation is developing and a united air service is projected. And yet, except to a limited extent in two states, it cannot be said with positiveness whether an aviator is a trespasser as to the landowner over whose soil he flies, under what circumstances the aviator or his employer is liable if the machine falls to earth and does damage to person or property, and whether the states or the nation, or both, have constitutional authority to regulate aerial navigation. Nor is there any general la'w, except the law of self-preservation, which forbids an inexperienced and incompetent pilot from flying anywhere in a defective machine. It is small wonder, therefore, that since the end of the World War we find considerable agitation in favor of legislation regarding aviation. In an address in February, 1919, Mr. A. R. Hawley, then President of the Aero Club of America, urged federal legislation to regulate the navigation of the air.3 A committee of the Manufacturers Aircraft Association reported September 15, 1919, and recommended acceptance of the International Air Convention and the adoption of federal legislation.4 Mr. Glenn L. Martin in November, 1920, advocated immediate federal legislation,' and in the same month the National Aircraft Underwriters Association held a meeting in New York at which the president arguedfor speedy Congressional action.' Mr. G. W. Harris, in an article in the New York Evening Post in December, 1920,' says: More and more the thinking men who are taking an enlight- ened interest in aerial navigation are convinced that the one 'Professor of Law in the Cornell University College of Law; member of the Committees on Aviation of the American Bar Association and of the Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. 2E. N. Findley in New York Times, Jan. io, 1921. '8 Flying 149. 'Unpubhshed report of that committee. 6lo Aviation 22, Jan. 3, 1921. 6Aerial Age, Nov. 8, 1920, p. 248. 7Reprinted in Lit. Dig., Dec. 4, 1920.

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