S. Neil Hosenball, a former general counsel of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration who was one of the federal government’s leading experts in both contract and space law, died on Dec. 23 after a long illness. He was 84.

As NASA general counsel between 1975 and 1985, Hosenball was a pioneer in the law of outer space, serving as a member of U.S. teams that studied such issues as moon exploration, the peaceful use of outer space and liability for space junk which returns to earth.  He successfully negotiated agreements on such ground-breaking – or horizon-stretching — issues via the United Nations and with the Soviet Union during tense moments of the post-Cold War era.

S. Neil Hosenball

As NASA’s chief lawyer at the height of the space agency’s most triumphant achievements, Hosenball also was responsible for overseeing both the framework in which the agency awarded massive contracts to private industry and also reviewing and clearing the details of individual contracts.

One of his ex-colleagues, his former NASA deputy general counsel Gerald Mossinghoff (later U.S. Patent and Trademark Commissioner and President of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association) said that Hosenball was a principal author of the Federal Acquisition Regulations, the administrative code which today governs virtually all government procurement activity.

Seymour Neil Hosenball, known to his friends as “Neil” or “Cy,” was the son of Eastern European immigrants who settled in the Bronx borough of New York City in the early 20th century.  His father ran a candy store and worked as a hat-maker. A gifted student, Neil attended the Bronx High School of Science, and then served in the European theater as a U.S. Army medic during the latter years of World War II.

After undergraduate study at the University of Michigan, he considered graduate  studies in either medicine or law; when a leading medical school told him he would have to wait a year for a place, instead he took up immediate enrollment at Harvard Law School.

Armed with a Harvard LLB, Hosenball initially went into private practice in Cleveland, Ohio, with his father-in-law Oscar J. Green, who represented small manufacturing and trucking companies, sometimes in fractious dealings with rambunctious local labor leaders such as the Teamsters’ Union’s Billy and Jackie Presser.

Hosenball subsequently entered government service as a junior lawyer with a local U.S. Army contracting office. When his boss left to join the legal staff at the Lewis Research Center, a large NASA installation adjacent to Cleveland Airport which specialized in research on rocket propulsion, Hosenball went with him, rising rapidly through the ranks to become the installation’s chief counsel.

In 1966, he moved to NASA headquarters in Washington as the agency’s assistant general counsel for procurement; within two years he had become deputy general counsel, a position he held when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took humankind’s first steps on the moon. He was named the agency’s general counsel under the administration of President Gerald Ford and held the position – a political-level appointment – through the presidency of Jimmy Carter and until the end of Ronald Reagan’s first term in office.

After retiring from government service, Hosenball helped to establish a space law program at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Subsequently, he was a partner, and later, of counsel, in the Washington office of the Denver-based law firm Davis, Graham and Stubbs.

Former legal colleagues say that Hosenball’s contributions to the law of outer space and U.S. government contract law were equally lasting. One of Hosenball’s treasured personal mementos was a print of the famous picture of Buzz Aldrin planting a U.S. flag on the moon, carrying an autograph from Aldrin saluting his lawyer in space.

From 1970 to 1979, Hosenball served as a member of the U.S. delegation to the U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space; on occasions he served as head of the U.S. delegation at legal subcommittee and committee sessions. Among his fellow negotiators during this period were the then-US Ambassador to the United Nations, George H.W. Bush, with whom Hosenball had a cordial relationship.

Perhaps the most prominent result of Hosenball’s diplomatic effort was an international “Agreement governing the activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies,” otherwise known as the “Moon Treaty.”  The treaty established that the moon and other celestial bodies should be used exclusively for peaceful purposes, that their environments should not be disrupted, that the United Nations should be informed of the location and purpose of any station established on those bodies. The treaty also declared that the moon and its natural resources are the common heritage of humankind and that an international regime should be established to govern the exploitation of such resources. (To his regret, the U.S. Congress never ratified the treaty, although it eventually came into force anyway).

Another important space treaty Hosenball helped negotiate was an international agreement on the remote sensing of earth from outer space. An oral history of these negotiations, including an interview with Hosenball, was published by the National Remote Sensing and Space Law Center of the University of Mississippi, and can be accessed here.

In additional to his legal prowess, Hosenball also was known for his sense of humor. During one series of tense negotiations with the Soviets, according to a story told by Hosenball’s colleagues, the Russians were so confident that none of their American interlocutors spoke their language that they openly discussed their negotiating strategies in front of U.S. delegates. But as the negotiations drew to a close, Hosenball and a Hungarian-American colleague worked up a surprise for their Soviet counterparts. Ducking out of the final negotiating sessions, they went to the New York Public Library, where they persuaded that institution’s top Russian to teach the Hungarian an elaborate Russian toast. After practicing the toast all night, the Hungarian and Hosenball turned up at a valedictory dinner. The Hungarian delivered his toast word-perfect, leaving the astonished Soviet delegates wondering how many of their negotiating secrets had been compromised by American eavesdropping (In fact none of their secrets had been compromised, because the Hungarian-American didn’t know any other Russian).

Hosenball, whose Washington Post obituary can be read here, leaves a widow, the former Gitta Haber, three children, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. His previous marriage to Rosalyn Hosenball ended in divorce.