faulker080

[Second and final part of a guest post by Geoffrey Wandesforde-Smith - Part I is here .] The second point to take away from Arch’s book is that when organized whaling became established in early modern Japan, under the watchful eye of domainal lords ( daimyo ), who could decide who had jurisdiction over particular whaling areas, or over bodies of whales either washed up on shore or brought to a particular shore for processing, regulation was a way of dealing with the local problems of particular businesses, and of their interrelationships, and of the ways those businesses could benefit the domain through fee exactions, as a kind of tax-like income for the domain. It was not about ensuring the continued availability of whale meat as a food source. Indeed, when it took hold and expanded during the Tokugawa peace, Japanese whaling was not primarily about food. It was about profit and about ensuring the continued supply of a wide range of whale products. Sutter is eloquent on this point: W...

[Sorry for the continued silence, but thanks to  Geoffrey Wandesforde-Smith for pitching in with this two-part book review!] At the end of May, the New York Times along with other major news outlets around the world reported that a new round of scientific whaling by Japan during the austral summer of 2017-18 yielded a catch of 333 minke whales, but that of this number 122 were pregnant females and 114 were considered immature individuals [1]. The news invited and perhaps stoked outrage, which history shows can be a powerful force shaping environmental law and policy. Japan took the whales pursuant to a scientific research exemption to the moratorium on commercial whaling enacted by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and effective in 1986 [2]. The first research program under which Japan continued whaling in the Antarctic despite and perhaps in defiance of the moratorium, a program known as JARPA-II, was found in a 2014 decision of the International Court of Justice not to meet ...

Ecology Law Quarterly  recently published a student note by Emma Hamilton, "A Relic of the Past or the Future of Environmental Criminal Law? An Argument for a Broad Interpretation of Liability under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act" . The note is mostly normative, but it has an interesting introductory section (apparently relying heavily on Kurk Dorsey's 1998  The Dawn of Conservation Diplomacy ). Hamilton explains (notes omitted) that: early congressional attempts to regulate bird hunting in the United States were driven by broad concerns about conserving and stabilizing bird populations as an important shared resource. After years of advocacy and lobbying, conservationists, scientists, and recreational hunters who wanted to achieve sustainable populations of game birds succeeded in passing the Weeks–McLean Migratory Bird Act in 1913. The Weeks–McLean Act criminalized the killing and transport of migratory birds across state lines within the United States but was declared u...