What do Whale Wars and Sister Wives have in common? The activities and participants in both are the subjects of fairly novel federal court decisions. Most recently, the polygamy show yielded Brown v. Burnham, which we’ve written about extensively here. The whale show yielded Institute of Cetacean Research v. Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, dealing with […]
Tag Archives | Whale Wars
Yes, Sea Shepherd Engages in Piracy Under International Law
The Ninth Circuit was right to reverse the district court in the Sea Shepherd Case. The district court erroneously read “private ends” as excluding political ends like saving the whales. But the “private ends” requirement has never been understood to inject a subjective element to the piracy inquiry. It does not turn on whether the […]
The Sea Shepherd Decision: Sailing Ahead of Kiobel
The Ninth Circuit’s reversal of a district court decision ruling that actions by Sea Shepherd against Japanese whaling vessels could not constitute piracy because they did not satisfy the “private ends” requirement is obviously correct. (Institute of Cetacean Research v. Sea Shepard Conservation Society.) The district court’s analysis always struck me as strange and disconnected […]