In response to a column of mine on Mars a few weeks back, reader Philip Shropshire posted a comment asking: “I’m curious as to what you think. Would you prefer to live under the American constitution on Mars or a new constitution that you designed yourself…in case you’re looking for next week’s column material.” Well, I’m always happy with suggestions for new columns, but this isn’t actually all that new an idea. In fact, the Smithsonian Institution, in cooperation with Boston University’s Center for Democracy, produced a set of principles for creating a new constitution to govern human societies on Mars, and elsewhere in outer space; fellow lawyer John Ragosta and I drafted an alternative proposal that was published in the American Bar Association’s journal of law, science and technology, Jurimetrics.