When novel and complex legal problems arise, the legal mind is paralysed – caught between squeezing the problem into familiar models or creating new and distinctive legal approaches. Despite the growth of the international legal consciousness, threats of aviation terrorism have elicited predominately national regulatory responses, and as such, the innovative corpus of law produced by the United States of America concerning Passenger Name Records (PNR) conflicts with fundamental liberties guaranteed in the European Union. This article considers this conflict of norms, ascertains how they are to be balanced in the interest of global cooperation, and discusses what, going forward, should be the driving force of policy development.
Air and Space Law