Law of the Sea Commons^™

This Is Not A Game: The Addictive Allure Of Digital Companions, Nizan Geslevich Packin, Karni Chagal-Feferkorn

Seattle University Law Review

Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents have become an inescapable part of modern childhood, reshaping education, leisure activities, entertainment, and social interaction. From AI-powered tutors that adapt to individual learning styles to emotionally responsive chatbots that simulate human companionship, these systems promise unprecedented personalization, cognitive stimulation, and social support. However, these benefits mask significant risks that remain unregulated and inadequately addressed.

Although adults are also susceptible to forming deep emotional bonds with AI companions—often trusting them as if they possessed genuine understanding and empathy—children are particularly vulnerable. Their misplaced trust can more severely distort social development, weaken critical thinking, and foster unhealthy …

Maine’S Arctic Future: Balancing Economic Opportunity, Geopolitical Risk, And Legal Responsibility, Emily Elmore

Ocean and Coastal Law Journal

This Paper explores the dynamic intersection of climate change, geopolitical strategy, and economic development in the rapidly changing Arctic landscape, focusing on existing legal paradigms and Maine’s unique position as a pivotal player in this context. Maine, with its historic ties to the Arctic, scientific partnerships, and strategic location as the northernmost port on the United States East Coast, is well-placed to capitalize on emerging economic opportunities. However, these opportunities are accompanied by substantial risks, including climate change impacts, operational challenges in the harsh Arctic environment, and geopolitical tensions among rival states vying for influence in the region. This Paper …

Gaps In Accountability For Submarine Cable Protection: Inadequacies In The Current Legal Framework, Martin Kwan

Ocean and Coastal Law Journal

Submarine cable protection has become a hotly discussed topic as the risk of damage has dramatically increased amidst wars and geopolitical tensions. This Article critically analyzes six gaps in accountability for cable protection. First, there is no civil accountability for non-territorial damage. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) allows no residual jurisdiction, and the English case of Virgin Media Ltd. v. Joseph Whelan reasoned that the absence of exclusive jurisdiction to lay cables in those waters means no civil jurisdiction by the coastal state. But this Article argues that it is an exclusive right, taking …

Detention Of Foreign Seafarers And Vessels: Pollution Prevention Or Piracy?, Edward Maccoll, Marshall Tinkle

Ocean and Coastal Law Journal

The purpose of this Article is to interrogate the legal basis for holding foreign crewmembers against their will in connection with APPS prosecutions. Part I examines the underlying justification for prosecuting foreign vessel owners for foreign conduct under APPS. It first discusses the international anti-pollution regimen from which APPS emerged. Next, the Article explores the handful of cases in which APPS prosecutions have been challenged and for the most part sustained, and then offers a critique of the rationale for such prosecutions. Part II explores the lawfulness of the techniques to detain foreign crewmembers and press those crewmembers into the …

The Need For The Enactment Of Prize Law Legislation In Indonesia, Pornomo Rovan Astri Yoga

Indonesian Journal of International Law

Indonesia is a peace-loving nation. However, maintaining independence is more precious than maintaining peace. Therefore, Indonesia will always be ready to maintain its independence at any cost, including war. Indonesia claims itself as a maritime nation. All of those facts disregard the point that Indonesia lacks legislation regarding the law of naval warfare. This is particularly true in the case of the prize law. There are no single laws, statutes, or even procedures that govern the prize law in times of armed conflict at sea. The practice of the prize law has also been lacking since Indonesia’s independence in 1945. …

Through A Glass Darkly: How Securities Disclosures Give A Distorted View Of The Economy, Gerald F. Davis

Seattle University Law Review

Our understanding of the American economy often relies on stylized facts derived from mandatory disclosures by listed corporations. Data vendors like Standard & Poor’s vacuum up 10Ks and proxy statements into databases, and scholars distill these into tentative maps. This may have been adequate for a postwar economy centered on asset-heavy manufacturers, but it is increasingly out of step with an information-based economy. Companies listed on the stock market are fewer in number and less representative than they were, light in tangible assets and people, and heavy on IP. Basic facts such as what industry they are in are increasingly …

Beyond Agency Authority: Regulating Sulfur Hexafluoride Under An Enhanced Title Ii Framework Of The Clean Air Act, Matthew Gawley

Fordham Environmental Law Review

This paper explores the critical need for robust Congressional action to regulate sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), a greenhouse gas with a global warming potential more than 20,000 times greater than carbon dioxide. Recent Supreme Court decisions––in West Virginia v. EPA and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo––to restrict EPA authority and end the Chevron doctrine have curtailed federal environmental agencies’ regulatory authority, shifting the responsibility for addressing major environmental challenges back to Congress. Despite being addressed under Title I of the Clean Air Act (CAA) through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), current SF6 regulations prove grossly inadequate. The utilities industry––the largest …

Article Iii Standing For Cercla Private Cost Recovery Actions: How The Test's Strained Logic Belies Its Authority, Jonathan M. Palacios

Fordham Environmental Law Review

This Note examines how Article III standing doctrine applies to

private plaintiffs’ cost recovery actions under § 107(a)(4)(B) of the

Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and

Liability Act. A review of judicial decisions reveals inconsistencies

in the analysis of injury in fact and traceability, and suggests that

current Article III standing doctrine is misaligned with its purported

objectives. In response, this Note proposes a structured framework

for assessing injury in fact and a refined approach to analyzing

traceability that distinguishes between different forms of causal

uncertainty. These doctrinal adjustments should better align case

outcomes with Article III standing doctrine’s constitutional and …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Corporate Scenarios: Drawing Lessons From History, Madison Condon

Seattle University Law Review

As corporations are increasingly pressed to reveal information about their exposure to climate-related risks, they are often asked to undertake and disclose the outcome of “scenario analysis.” In this exercise, corporations, including financial institutions, examine how their business would fare under different pathways the future may take. One oft-used scenario, for example, is the International Energy Agency’s “Net-Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Energy Sector.” This Essay presents a history of the use of scenarios as a corporate planning tool, particularly in the oil industry, arguing that it is key for understanding our present moment and the role of …

Shareholder Expression In A Time Of Heightened Political Tension, Aaron A. Dhir

Seattle University Law Review

In this article, I provide context for my forthcoming research project on shareholder proposals and racial equity audits. Since the murder of George Floyd in May of 2020, progressive shareholder actors have increasingly used the proposal mechanism to advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice-related goals. These proposals have frequently gone beyond requesting the usual corporate fare of diversity trainings, intersectionality workshops, affinity groups, etc. Instead, a more ambitious type of proposal asks corporate America to conduct racial equity audits, defined as “an independent, objective and holistic analysis of a company’s policies, practices, products, services and efforts to combat systemic racism …

Corporate Governance Speech, Sarah C. Haan

Seattle University Law Review

The State has always regulated the intra-firm communications that make corporate governance possible, most commonly by mandating disclosures of information by a corporation to its shareholders. Some such laws are labeled “securities regulation,” but securities regulation is a broad category that extends to speech by actors who are outside the corporate enterprise as well. Also, the conventional securities regulation category does not capture all such laws; other examples, including informationforcing mandates, can be found in state corporate law. This Article uses the term “corporate governance speech” to describe the communications among shareholders, directors, and officers through which corporate governance is …

Dark Accounting Matter, Colleen Honigsberg

Seattle University Law Review

Physicists calculate that approximately 85% of the matter in the universe is composed of “dark matter” that “does not absorb, reflect, or emit electromagnetic radiation and is therefore difficult to detect.” The S&P 500 currently trades at a price-to-book value of 4.2, suggesting that book value accounts for less than 20% of the S&P 500’s market value. The remaining 80% appears nowhere in these firms’ balance sheets—it is invisible to contemporary accounting techniques and constitutes “dark accounting matter.”

Some “dark accounting matter” is composed of factors commonly described as components of “ESG.” Human capital, for example, is an intangible asset …

The Employees’ Dilemma: Balancing Internal Reporting, Whistleblowing, And Insider Trading Risks, Geeyoung Min

Seattle University Law Review

The Essay examines how recent developments in insider trading regulations and whistleblower reward programs can lead to unintended and counterproductive results of discouraging employees from using internal reporting channels within corporate compliance programs. While the presence of a robust and well-functioning corporate compliance program is a critical factor both in mitigating the level of public enforcement actions against companies and in protecting corporate managers from liability in private litigation, these programs often provide little incentive for employees to report potential misconduct internally.

Corporate compliance programs are designed to promote the upward information flow within the company, which is essential for …

How The Antidiscrimination Law Of Commercial Transactions Really Works, Helen Norton

Seattle University Law Review

A variety of businesses now cite 303 Creative when seeking First Amendment protection for their refusal to serve certain customers based on those customers’ protected class status. How this litigation will play out remains to be seen. But future courts need not, and should not, repeat the 303 Creative Court’s misunderstanding of how the antidiscrimination law of commercial transactions actually works.

Part I of this Essay explains the Court’s longstanding understanding of the antidiscrimination law of commercial transactions, and then describes the Court’s failure to engage with this precedent in 303 Creative. Part II then identifies the 303 Creative decision’s …

Charting The Course : The Role Of Imo Within The Unclos Legal Framework In Tackling Challenges Of Contemporary Shipping, M. C. Romero, R. Beckman, T. Nguyen, J. Ong, G. Theocharidis

Reports

This report documents the proceedings of the two-day workshop, "Charting the Course: The role of IMO within the UNCLOS legal framework in tackling challenges of contemporary shipping," jointly organized by the World Maritime University (WMU) and the Centre for International Law (CIL) of the National University of Singapore (NUS). The event took place in Malmö, Sweden, from June 9 to 10, 2025.

The central theme was the complementary relationship between the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and IMO regulations, with an emphasis on the flag State’s duties under UNCLOS Article 94. The workshop’s core …

Green Dividends: A Case Study In Green Dividends And The Conditions For Private Ordering Solutions, Anne M. Tucker

Seattle University Law Review

This Essay introduces a novel private ordering solution to facilitate corporate investments in pro-social and environmental initiatives: Green dividends. Green dividends are an optional increase in shareholder dividends that are returned to the company to be reinvested in environmental initiatives or kept by a shareholder.

Green dividends pose an alternative to the current gridlocked debate that corporations can’t, won’t, shouldn’t, and shouldn’t even try to act in pro-social or environmental ways. Turning the common refrains on their head converts each narrative into an element for a successful private ordering solution: authority, accountability, shareholder buy-in, and government- backed enforcement. With Green …

Does Climate Disclosure Work To Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions? Emerging Evidence Suggests Cautious Optimism, Cynthia A. Williams

Seattle University Law Review

Significant regulatory resources have been spent developing global, voluntary climate and sustainability disclosure standards, such as the TCFD, TNRD, and ISSB’s Sustainability and Climate Disclosure standards, or domestically required disclosures, such as in the EU and in the U.S. Thus, it is important to evaluate whether this disclosure, particularly voluntary, qualitative disclosure, will have the power to shift the allocation of capital, will have a significant effect on the management of climate risk within firms, and ultimately will reduce climate change risk and biodiversity loss.

In this Article, several interrelated questions will be discussed. First, what does the empirical evidence …

Navigating The Seas Of History In International Law, Valentina Vadi

South Carolina Journal of International Law and Business

Inquiries into questions of time, history, and international law have recently come to the fore. So far, however, many studies have only examined developments in international law from a temporally and thematically fragmented, brief, and narrow perspective. Due to international law’s growing normative and institutional fragmentation and emphasis on specific crises, episodes, and events, many analyses focus on transient trends and particular facets of international law. This study suggests an alternative to these constrained viewpoints: a thorough, multilayered, and broad perspective to questions of international law, drawing on Fernand Braudel’s tripartite theory of time.

Braudel’s theory of time provides valuable …

Human Rights At Sea: Analyzing States' Responses To Cruise Ships During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Lixin Chen

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, the treatment of cruise ships by coastal states was inconsistent, with some ships being allowed to dock while others were not. To that end, this Note focuses on the obligations that a coastal state owes to the individuals onboard the cruise ships in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the rights to life and health. It further considers whether and how such rights are to be balanced with other countervailing considerations of such states, such as the risk of transmission to the local communities. This author concludes with the view that …

A Discourse Analysis Of The Development Of Institutional Compliance Mechanisms At The International Maritime Organization, Rebecca Pskowski

World Maritime University Ph.D. Dissertations

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) plays a pivotal and essential role in international maritime governance, providing a forum for nation states to develop and agree to international standards for maritime safety and security and the protection of the marine environment. IMO is widely perceived to be one of the most successful universal international organizations (IOS), because of the high technical quality of the conventions and other legal instruments it develops, and the near-universal acceptance of most of those instruments. IMO could be seen as an exemplar of the "technical" specialized United Nations agency, where nation-states set aside politics to agree …

Volume 48 Masthead, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead

Voting Matters: Materiality Considerations And The Shareholder Vote, Renee M. Jones

Seattle University Law Review

For the shareholder franchise to have meaning, shareholders must have access to relevant information to inform their voting decisions. The securities laws’ disclosure requirements play an essential role in informing the shareholder vote.

This Essay focuses on the question of the materiality of information in the context of shareholder voting. It addresses the question of whether ESG-related information is material, positioning the materiality inquiry within the context of shareholders’ voting decisions. It explores the definition of materiality with a focus on the “reasonable investor” concept embedded within the definition. The Essay argues that the implicit expectations of many commentators that …

Volume 48 Masthead, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead

Understanding The Big Three’S Wavering Support Of Environmental And Social Shareholder Proposals, Jeff Schwartz, Jefferson Jensen

Seattle University Law Review

Because of their substantial equity portfolios, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street (the Big 3) are central players in corporate governance. It is, therefore, critical to understand how they vote. One puzzle is that their support for shareholder proposals on environmental and social matters appears to waiver. In 2020, for instance, BlackRock supported 11.1% of environmental proposals at S&P 500 firms. In 2021, it seemingly reversed course, supporting 55.2%. It then flipped again, supporting 32.1% in 2022. Such statistics suggest that the Big 3 are constantly changing their views on these topics. This Article seeks to better understand whether this is …

Volume 48 Masthead, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead

Delays In The International Seabed Authority Mining Code: Insight From Twail And Bbnj Frameworks, Ria Wierma Putri, Yuga Narazua Khanza, Orima Melati Davey, Febryani Sabatira

Indonesia Law Review

The International Seabed Authority (ISA) plays a crucial role in governing the vast expanses of the ocean floor that lie beyond national jurisdictions, referred to as "the Area" under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Although the ISA has established regulations for deep-sea exploration, it has encountered significant challenges in finalizing a comprehensive mining code for resource exploitation. This ongoing delay underscores the notion that legal development is often catalyzed by broader social changes. To comprehend the factors contributing to this delay, it is essential to consider the historical context of UNCLOS 1982, a framework …

The Constitution At Sea, Louis Henkin

Maine Law Review

Time was when it was assumed that the United States Constitution, like a deity of old, ruled only in its territory and did not apply outside the United States. Since 1957 we know that the Constitution applies wherever the United States exercises authority. If, as the Supreme Court then held, the Constitution governs the acts of the United States in the territory of a foreign state, where the Constitution might be deemed a foreign "intruder" on local sovereignty, it would seem to apply also — indeed a fortiori — to acts of the United States on the high seas, where …

The Gulf Of Maine Case And The Future Of Ocean Boundary Delimitation, Edward Collins Jr., Martin R. Rogoff

Maine Law Review

On October 12, 1984, a Chamber of the International Court of Justice handed down its decision in the Case Concerning the Delimitation of the Maritime Boundary in the Gulf of Maine Area (Can. v. U.S.). By a vote of four to one, the Chamber described in geodetic lines the course of the single maritime boundary that divides the continental shelf and exclusive fishery zones of Canada and the United States in that area. The Chamber's decision ended more than a decade of conflict between the two countries concerning jurisdiction over continental shelf and fishery resources in the Georges Bank area. …

Lost At The South China Sea: A Legal Rationale For Joining Unclos, Dean Feinman

Fordham Law Review

Rising tensions in the South China Sea are a tired front of great power competition. Since President Barack Obama’s “pivot to Asia,” there has been renewed attention on growing Chinese naval power and influence, which stands to challenge the U.S. status as the world’s preeminent naval force. Despite a clear and obvious interest in maintaining a favorable global oceans regime, the United States has not ratified the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the principal international instrument governing the use of the oceans. Instead, the United States argues that ratification is unnecessary because UNCLOS “embodies” customary …