Law of the Sea Commons^™

Beyond The Tide: Beginning Admiralty With The Steamboat Magnolia, Joel K. Goldstein

All Faculty Scholarship

Admiralty is potentially one of the richest subjects in the law school curriculum. This claim may be received skeptically by those who have neither taught nor taken the course. Yet my experience as a student in, and teacher of, the course confirms my belief that Admiralty holds that promise, especially if it is presented not simply as a vehicle to train the relatively few who hope to become maritime lawyers, but as an opportunity for students with different aspirations to explore some of the most interesting issues in law. As a crosscutting course, Admiralty offers a chance to integrate materials …

Economic Loss, Punitive Damages, And The Exxon Valdez Litigation, Dr. Ronen Perry

Georgia Law Review

On March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez ran aground on
Bligh Reef off the Alaskan coast, spilling millions of
gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound. At the

time, the spill was probably the worst environmental
disaster in American history, and it sparked unusually
extensive and complex litigation, as well as a vast
academic literature. The Article uncovers a fundamental
yet unnoticed inconsistency in American land-based and
maritime tort law that surfaced through the Exxon Valdez
litigation. On the one hand, liability for purely economic
losses was strictly limited under Robins Dry Dock v. Flint,
leaving dozens of thousands …

Limits On The Giant Leap For Mankind: Legal Ambiguities Of Extraterrestrial Resource Extraction, David Johnson

American University International Law Review

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.

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 …

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 …

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 …

Foreword, José Luis Jesus

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

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

Articles

No abstract provided.

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.