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Kontorovich & Art on Universal Jurisdiction for Piracy

By Lawrence Solum

Eugene Kontorovich and Steven Art (Northwestern University Law School) have posted The Limits of Judicial Altruism: An Empirical Examination of Universal Jurisdiction for Piracy on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

This Article presents the first systematic empirical study of the use of universal jurisdiction over an international crime. It determines the percentage of acts of piracy where nations exercised universal jurisdiction during a ten-year period from 1998 to 2007, and then calculates the same for the eruption of piracy in the Gulf of Aden that began in 2008. We examined several hundred pages of piracy reports to count all reported piratical incidents and responses in the relevant period. Knowing how many high seas piracies there have been allows us to determine the rate at which universal jurisdiction is exercised.

Universal [jurisdiction] allows any nation to prosecute certain international crimes, even when the nation has no connection with the perpetrator of the underlying conduct. Today, national courts increasingly apply this doctrine to various human rights offenses and war crimes. Despite the vast amount written by scholars about universal jurisdiction, it has been used in only a few dozen cases over the past two decades. Critics of UJ argue that it is stillborn, while supporters claim that, because the practice is still in its ?infancy,? the current level of prosecution is not indicative of universal jurisdiction?s ultimate potential.

One editorial change has been made in the abstract.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on December 10, 2009 (boomark / email).