Law of the Sea Commons^™

Continental Shelf Delimitation Beyond 200 Nautical Miles: Approaches Taken By Coastal States Before The Commission On The Limits Of The Continental Shelf, Coalter G. Lathrop

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Mugged Twice?: Payment Of Ransom On The High Seas, Lawrence Rutkowski, Bruce G. Paulsen, Jonathan D. Stoian

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Salvage Awards On The Somali Coast: Who Pays For Public And Private Rescue Efforts In Piracy Crises?, Geoffrey Christopher Rapp

American University Law Review

This paper, a contribution to the "Troubled Waters: Combating Modern Piracy with the Rule of Law" symposium, explores the question of who pays for rescue efforts associated with maritime piracy. The paper explores the availability of admiralty law's salvage awards to governmental and non-governmental actors who intervene to rescue vessels and crew from pirates. Such awards provide an unusual incentive to rescue, traditionally unavailable for land-based rescue, but may raise complicated questions of policy and international law. The paper concludes by comparing salvage awards to a recent trend in American states to adopt "Search and Rescue" expense statutes allowing governments …

International Legal Framework On The Prevention Of Vessel-Source Pollution, Nengye Liu

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

T h is paper exa mi ne s the international legal f r a m e w o r k of the prevention of vessel-source marine pollution. It provides an overview of current international framework. First-the study introduces International Maritime Organization (IM O ) and the Law of the Sea Convention (LO SC ). Second-it analyzes the relation between Conventions adopted under the auspices of the IMO (IMO Conventions) and the LOSC. Third.it discusses major IMO Conventions dealing with prevention of vessel-source pollution. Finally, this paper addresses challenges of the international legal framework.

The Vulnerability Of Subsea Infrastructure To Underwater Attack: Legal Shortcomings And The Way Forward, Laurence Reza Wrathall

San Diego International Law Journal

This Article explores the vulnerability of submarine pipelines and cables to underwater subterfuge beyond territorial waters, particularly with regards to the emerging threat posed by unmanned vehicles in executing such mal intent. Next, it describes the legal status of this critical infrastructure before identifying shortcomings in legal protection from underwater attack. Finally, potential solutions are offered for the way forward.

Fighting Piracy With Private Security Measures: When Contract Law Should Tell Parties To Walk The Plank, Jennifer S. Martin

American University Law Review

This Article addresses the following question: when should contract law permit parties to discontinue performance under a private security contract aimed to combat piracy? Piracy has been 'on the rise' off Somalia and in East Asia, with serious attacks escalating. Some shipping companies have responded by drafting 'best management practices', hiring security companies to advise on countering the threat and hiring armed or unarmed security protection. After presenting representative factual situations involving pirate attacks, the Article describes the traditional approach to defining the obligations of parties and the performance issues that arise during contractual performance. This approach takes into account …

Developing An Ecological Social Justice Framework For Ocean Energy Technologies: Case Studies From The Phillipines, Jay Batongbacal

PhD Dissertations

Unless subjected to skeptical and conscious scrutiny, environmentally-friendly ocean energy technologies can become Trojan machines of social inequity due to the subtle re-organizing influences of technologies on culture and the society. Environmental laws that promote or regulate ocean energy technologies can act as Trojan legal regimes in the absence of a framework for assessing and anticipating their adverse impacts on social justice. Environmental justice is inadequate for this task, so an alternative framework is proposed: ecological social justice, drawn from the Third Worlds perspective of sustainable development as equitable sharing. Though overshadowed by the prevalent notion of sustainable development as …

Physical-Strength Rationales For De Jure Exclusion Of Women From Military Combat Positions, Maia Goodell

Seattle University Law Review

Women have been serving in the military in steadily increasing numbers for decades. Nevertheless, the military remains one of the few areas in which the U.S. government decides what roles are open to women based on de jure exclusions. This Article examines the law governing de jure classification, noting that a mere normative belief about women’s proper place in society is an insufficient basis to justify a sex-based exclusion. It then probes the most common rationale advanced in support of the continued de jure exclusion of women: physical strength. The Article examines four problems with the physical strength rationale: (1) …

How Piracy Has Shaped The Relationship Between American Law And International Law, Joel H. Samuels

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Rationality, Pirates, And The Law: A Retrospective, Peter T. Leeson

American University Law Review

In the late 1720s Caribbean piracy was brought to a screeching halt. An enhanced British naval presence was partly responsible for this. But most important in bringing pirates to their end was a series of early 18th-century legal changes that made it possible to effectively prosecute them. This short paper’s purpose is to recount those legal changes and document their effectiveness. Its other purpose is to analyze pirates’ response to the legal changes designed to exterminate them, which succeeded, at least partly, in frustrating the government’s goal. By providing a retrospective look at anti-piracy law and pirates’ reactions to that …

It's A Pirate's Life For Some: The Development Of An Illegal Industry In Response To An Unjust Global Power Dynamic, Elliot A. Anderson

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This Note discusses the domestic and international economic effects of the recent surge of piracy off the coast of Somalia, and uses Somali piracy as a method of exploring conflicting ideological conditions that arise from globalization. In exploring the underlying motivations for this trend, it identifies a dichotomy between primary needs satisfaction within underdeveloped nations and the satisfaction of secondary interests in developed nations, and explains how globalization may be exacerbating the turn toward piracy. This Note first discusses the recent rise in piracy and then explores how the contemporary history of Somalia has engendered the upsurge. Next, it considers …

How Piracy Has Shaped The Relationship Between American Law And International Law, Joel H. Samuels

Articles

No abstract provided.

Foreword, José Luis Jesus

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Somali Piracy Problem: A Global Puzzle Necessitating A Global Solution, Milena Sterio

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Over the past few years, piracy has exploded off the coast of Somalia. Somali pirates congregate on a "mother ship" and then divide into smaller groups that sail out on tiny skiffs. Using potent weapons such as AK-47s and hand-propelled grenades, Somali pirates attack civilian ships carrying cargo through the Gulf of Aden, a body of water between Yemen and Somalia. Once they have overtaken the victim vessel, the pirates typically hijack the vessel's cargo and kidnap the crewmembers. The cargo is often resold to willing buyers or held for ransom. The crew are kept hostage in Somalia until either …

Seafloor Mapping In The Arctic: Support For A Potential U.S. Extended Continental Shelf, Larry A. Mayer, Andy Armstrong, Brian R. Calder, James V. Gardner

Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping

For the United States, the greatest opportunity for an extended continental shelf under UNCLOS is in the ice-covered regions of the Arctic north of Alaska. Since 2003, CCOM/JHC has been using the icebreaker Healy equipped with a multibeam echosounder, chirp subbottom profiler, and dredges, to map and sample the region of Chukchi Borderland and Alpha-Mendeleev Ridge complex. These data have led to the discovery of several new features, have radically changed our view of the bathymetry and geologic history of the area, and may have important ramifications for the determination of the limits of a U.S. extended continental shelf under …

Splitting Scales: Conflicting National And Regional Attempts To Manage Commercial Aquaculture In The Exclusive Economic Zone, Brandee Ketchum

Journal of Food Law & Policy

Like other environmental resources subject to public use, various interest groups struggle over joint management of scarce fisheries resources. Further, differing goals for resource management, such as financial goals versus conservation goals, frequently pit regional groups against one another. In some cases, regional interests may conflict with overall national interests. As goes the water and the air, so go the fish.

Regulating Resource Curses: Institutional Design And Evolution Of The Blood Diamond Regime, Lesley Wexler

Cardozo Law Review

The opening and expansion of global markets creates and exacerbates resource curses, or the phenomenon in which natural resource abundance creates governance problems. Yet international legal scholarship has been slow to recognize the relationship between freer trade and the financing of internal conflicts. While legal academics have long debated the role of law in addressing conflict generally, few have systematically addressed the intersection of trade regulation and the prevention or abatement of internal conflict. This Article looks closely at a recent regulatory effort to address the global trade in "blood diamonds," which are a particularly destructive example of a resource …

The European Union’S Role In The Prevention Of Vessel-Source Pollution And Its Internal Influence, Nengye Liu, Fran Maes

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The EU has the institutions and the comprehensive legal regime to regulate the prevention of vessel-source pollution within the Member States and these are reviewed here together with the international conventions. The EU has been much more proactive since the Erika and Prestige disasters with the adoption of a series of new regulations on the prevention of vessel-source pollution.This legislation also demonstrates an expansion of the competencies of EU institutions towards Member States, and the EU approach, although largely regarded as a success, has also been criticised as tending towards unilateralism.

Foreign Fishing Piracy Vs. Somalia Piracy – Does Wrong Equal Wrong?, Leticia M. Diaz, Barry Hart Dubner

Barry Law Review

This article is a sequel to the authors' last article, On the Evolution of the Law of International Sea Piracy, published in December 2009. That article attempted to illustrate the enormous problem of sea piracy off of Somalia. This article was inspired by the authors' attendance and participation at a two-day conference sponsored by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. After the conference the authors were inspired to write this article, setting forth a view of why Somali piracy started and some of the problems created by these illegal acts.

"A Guantanamo On The Sea": The Difficulties Of Prosecuting Pirates And Terrorists, Eugene Kontorovich

Faculty Working Papers

As a surge in pirate attacks in the seas around the Horn of Africa threatens to seriously damage international trade, the nations of the world have refused to enforce international law against these criminals. The dozens of nations patrolling the Gulf of Aden have ample legal authority to detain and prosecute pirates. Yet the United States and other navies have, as a matter of policy, been releasing apprehended pirates because of the difficulty of detaining or successfully prosecuting them. These fears are not unwarranted. As this Essay shows, while on the one hand international law requires all nations to fight …

Law, Science, And The Continental Shelf: The Russian Federation And The Promise Of Arctic Cooperation, Betsy Baker

American University International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Blackbeard Meets Blackwater: An Analysis Of International Conventions That Address Piracy And The Use Of Private Security Companies To Protect The Shipping Industry, Jill Harrelson

American University International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Russia And The Arctic: Opportunities For Engagement Within The Existing Legal Framework , Michael A. Becker

American University International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Countering Persistent Contemporary Sea Piracy: Expanding Jurisdictional Regimes, Joseph M. Isanga

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Uncharted Waters: The Supreme Court Plots The Course To A Constitutional Bright-Line Restriction On Punitive Awards In Exxon Shipping Co. V. Baker, Michael L. Brooks

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

When Good Courts Go Wrong: A Critique Of The Supreme Court's Domestic Maritime Boundary Jurisprudence, Gayl S. Westerman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In addressing the concerns presented in the introduction, Part II of this article will argue that the Supreme Court and its Special Masters have misapplied the rules embodied in the 1958 Convention and UNCLOS in regard to the establishment of juridical bays, in every domestic maritime boundary case since 1965. Part III will criticize the approach taken by the Special Master and thereafter by the Court in the Alaska case, and will suggest the correct methodology to be applied in cases with complex coastlines, such as the Alexander Archipelago. Part IV will briefly suggest that U.S. policy on the use …

Supporting Inclusiveness At Seattle U. And In The Law, Mark Niles

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Institutional Framework For Ocean Governance : A Way Forward, Mohd Khairul Tazril. Tarmizi

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Continental Shelf Beyond 200 Nautical Miles, Vladimir Jares

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

As policymakers, academia, and the media have paid increased attention to the Arctic region, there is more evidence of a certain lack of knowledge concerning the applicable international law.

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of December 10, 1982--adopted in 1982 and in force since November 16, 1994--provides both a legal framework within which all activities in oceans and seas must be carried out and, as far as the seabed of the Arctic Ocean international law is concerned, answers to questions related to its legal status and applicable regulations.

If a coastal State wishes to delineate …

Revisiting The Thames Formula: The Evolving Role Of The International Maritime Organization And Its Member States In Implementing The 1982 Law Of The Sea Convention, Craig H. Allen

San Diego International Law Journal

Despite the findings that marine casualty rates have "plummeted" and the safety record of the oil transport industry has "significantly improved," high visibility pollution incidents in the last decade like those involving the tankers Erika and Prestige off the coast of Europe, together with the chronic problems of illegal and unregulated fishing and dismal labor conditions for many seafarers led a United Nations-chartered consultative group of leading international organization representatives to conclude that there is an "urgent" need to improve State performance in the implementation and enforcement of the international maritime legal regime. There is less agreement, however, in how …