Maritime Law Quotes

LOG ENTRY: SOL 381 I’ve been thinking about laws on Mars. Yeah, I know, it’s a stupid thing to think about, but I have a lot of free time. There’s an international treaty saying no country can lay claim to anything that’s not on Earth. And by another treaty, if you’re not in any country’s territory, maritime law applies. So Mars is “international waters.” NASA is an American nonmilitary organization, and it owns the Hab. So while I’m in the Hab, American law applies. As soon as I step outside, I’m in international waters. Then when I get in the rover, I’m back to American law. Here’s the cool part: I will eventually go to Schiaparelli and commandeer the Ares 4 lander. Nobody explicitly gave me permission to do this, and they can’t until I’m aboard Ares 4 and operating the comm system. After I board Ares 4, before talking to NASA, I will take control of a craft in international waters without permission. That makes me a pirate! A space pirate!

would have breached a fundamental maritime code, the cruiser rules, or prize law, established in the nineteenth century to govern warfare against civilian shipping. Obeyed ever since by all seagoing powers, the rules held that a warship could stop a merchant vessel and search it but had to keep its crew safe and bring the ship to a nearby port, where a “prize court” would determine its fate. The rules forbade attacks against passenger vessels.

I phoned the Admiral back. 'It's no use, Admiral, the French speak nothing but French.' There was a short pause on the end of the line then his voice rattled into life like a sabre. 'They're lying, Tim!' 'What?' 'The French Navy must by law speak English, as English is the international maritime language of the sea.' 'Has anyone told the French that?' The line went dead for a moment before he thundered, 'Yes Nelson. At the battle of Trafalgar.' I tried to stifle an irresistibly British giggle not knowing if the Admiral was making a joke or not. I got it right. He was serious.

Intended to sound the alarm and raise England’s level of naval preparedness, the story was entertaining, and frightening, but was widely deemed too far-fetched to be believable, for Captain Sirius’s behavior would have breached a fundamental maritime code, the cruiser rules, or prize law, established in the nineteenth century to govern warfare against civilian shipping. Obeyed ever since by all seagoing powers, the rules held that a warship could stop a merchant vessel and search it but had to keep its crew safe and bring the ship to a nearby port, where a “prize court” would determine its fate. The rules forbade attacks against passenger vessels. In

I’ve been thinking about laws on Mars. Yeah, I know, it’s a stupid thing to think about, but I have a lot of free time. There’s an international treaty saying no country can lay claim to anything that’s not on Earth. And by another treaty, if you’re not in any country’s territory, maritime law applies. So Mars is “international waters.” NASA is an American nonmilitary organization, and it owns the Hab. So while I’m in the Hab, American law applies. As soon as I step outside, I’m in international waters. Then when I get in the rover, I’m back to American law. Here’s the cool part: I will eventually go to Schiaparelli and commandeer the Ares 4 lander. Nobody explicitly gave me permission to do this, and they can’t until I’m aboard Ares 4 and operating the comm system. After I board Ares 4, before talking to NASA, I will take control of a craft in international waters without permission. That makes me a pirate! A space pirate!

THE first Greeks were all pirates. Minos, who enjoyed the empire of the sea, was only more successful, perhaps, than others in piracy; for his maritime dominion extended no farther than round his own isle. But when the Greeks became a great people, the Athenians obtained the real dominion of the sea; because this trading and victorious nation gave laws to the most potent monarch of that time; and humbled the maritime powers of Syria, of the isle of Cyprus, and Phœnicia.

LOG ENTRY: SOL 381 I've been thinking about laws on Mars. Yeah, I know, it's a stupid thing to think about, but I have a lot of free time. There's an international treaty saying no country can lay claim to anything that's not on Earth. And by another treaty, if you're not in any country's territory, maritime law applies. So Mars is "international waters". NASA is an American nonmilitary organization, and it owns the Hab. So while I'm in the Hab, American law applies. As soon as I step outside, I'm in international waters. Then when I get in the rover, I'm back to American law. Here's the cool part: I will eventually go to Schiaparelli and commandeer the Ares 4 lander. Nobody explicitly gave me permission to do this, and they can't until I'm aboard Ares 4 and operating the comm system. After I board Ares 4, before talking to NASA, I will take control of a craft in international waters without permission. That makes me a pirate! A space pirate!

To a great extent, violence is a part of our culture. It amazes me that violence is readily accepted as the norm. We can see that, when movie producers don’t hesitate to show extreme bloodletting and the horrible way some of us treat our fellow human beings. As a result, we are not shocked when we hear about the slaughter of innocent people on the streets or in our schools. We protect our right to carry firearms never considering that our perception of what the second amendment says has been molded by special interest groups, who are ready to fight for any issue they are paid to promote. Lately I’ve had to wonder just how civilized we really are. Consider the issues we face every day and ask if we really have “Liberty & Justice for all?” Are we all equal under the law or are some of us more equal than others? Do we really live in a democracy or is it just an allusion and finally what would our founding fathers expect of us?

A naval officer in a crisp blue uniform gave us a speech about the traditions of the sea, and how we were to uphold them throughout our upcoming careers. It all sounded glorious, but to us it seemed to drag on forever. There were others who added to these sentiments, also in glowing terms. In contrast to us, the officers all looked very professional and sharp in their dress uniforms. It made me very aware that I still didn’t even have my working boots, a belt or a white gob hat, but never mind, most of us were still out of uniform. I guess that’s why we were called muggs! Now with my right hand up, I swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States and obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me, which was just about everybody. Flash bulbs went off and suddenly, I was in the Navy! Wow! I was now a Midshipman in the U.S. Naval Reserve and did I ever feel proud. Unfortunately there wasn’t much time to bask in this solitary ray of light. The swearing in ceremony was hardly over and already I was late for lunch. I had to run double time between buildings, squaring all the corners along the way. So, doing my best to observe all of these new rules, I ran as fast as I could to the mess hall. Getting there just before they slammed the windows shut, I got the last two pre-made, soggy sandwiches. The sandwiches were wet and crushed, and I could swear they had greasy fingerprints on them. This sad excuse for food only looked appetizing because of my extreme hunger. With no time to waste, I washed lunch down with a glass of warm “jungle juice” reminiscent of Camp Wawayanda, before scurrying off to my next appointment, which was at the barbershop, also in the basement of Richardson Hall.

As Robert Kiyosaki learned during his study of admiralty law, corporations came into common usage in the 1500s to protect investors in maritime ventures. Prior to the popular use of corporations, investors would come together as a partnership, outfit a ship, and send it out for trading purposes. If the ship was lost at sea, the investors could not only lose everything but also be personally sued by various creditors. Of course, this exposure deterred people from risk taking and discouraged economic activity. Seeing this, the English Crown and courts allowed for the charter of corporations whereby risks and liabilities could be limited to the corporation itself. The shareholders, the investors in the corporation, were liable only to the extent of their contribution to the business. This was a significant development in world economic history.

It has to do with maritime law,” Jake said. “That’s all I can say.” Avery appeared even more doubtful, and he turned his attention to Cody, who was growling at him. He stared at the dog for a moment. “What does your dog have against me?

The opportunity was in the fact that maritime law, in the form of the Jones Act, prevents foreign-built or foreign-flagged ships from conducting coastal trade in the U.S. In the case of tourism, foreign vessels have to either drop off or pick up passengers from a non-U.S. port, certainly not convenient for interisland vacationing in Hawaii.

After World War II the Allies refused to recognize Karl Dönitz as the president or führer, Reichspräsident, of Germany. Instead they declared the complete legal extinction of the Third Reich, following the death of Adolf Hitler on April 30, 1945. At the Nuremberg Trials following the war, Dönitz was tried on three criminal counts: (1) conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity; (2) planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression; and (3) crimes against the laws of war. Dönitz was found not guilty on the first count of the indictment, but guilty on the rest. Many high ranking Allied officers backed him and recommended leniency. After the trial, Admiral Dönitz was imprisoned for 10 years in Spandau Prison. He was released on October 1, 1956, and retired to the small village of Aumühle. He died there of a heart attack on December 24, 1980. As the last German naval officer to hold the highest rank of Grand Admiral, he was praised and honored by many former German officers and servicemen, as well as British and other foreign naval officers, who came to his funeral in full dress uniform, to pay their final respects.

After I found Titanic in 1985, I could have obtained salvage rights if I’d wanted to, according to international maritime law. But I wasn’t interested in retrieving artifacts. I believed we should respect the passengers and crew who had died there and leave their grave site undisturbed. Survivors, like Eva Hart, agreed. She was seven when the ship sank. “I saw all the horror of its sinking,” she told me. “And I heard, even more dreadful, the cries of drowning people.

Freedom of navigation is an indispensable part of Law of the Sea. It is the foundation stone of law of the sea. One of the purposes of law of the sea is to ensure peaceful navigation.

Both American and British law had long given special protection to shipowners whose vessels, through negligent handling, caused damage to others. The risks of sending ships to sea were so great that some special incentive was needed, if maritime nations were to grow and prosper. Moreover, on land the factory owner could at least theoretically oversee the acts of his employees, but the shipowner had no such control over his captain and crew. By the very nature of the business he was usually out of touch, and it seemed unfair to hold him to the same degree of responsibility when something went wrong. Therefore, as long as he did not have “privity or knowledge” of the negligence, his liability would be limited.

The truth is that the law enforcement system offers no effective protection for someone like Susan Butlin -- or Carla Samson. None.

The great irony of the Boudreau story is that the formal judicial system constantly scolded the accused for 'taking the law into their own hands' without ever recognizing that the accused had repeatedly and unsuccessfully tried to persuade the authorities to deal with Phillip. The root causes of the tragedy include a systemic failure of the legal system itself.

The most interesting thing I learned from this trip came when I told the story to my friend James, who had been a performer on a cruise ship years before. When I told him the woman said, “Bravo, bravo, bravo,” James froze. Did she really say it three times? he needed to know. Then James laid it out for me. Bravo is serious. The more times they say it, the more serious it is. The most times they ever say it is four times, and if they say it four times, it means you’re going down to your watery grave. So “Bravo, bravo, bravo” was not terrific. Interesting fact number two: In the event of an emergency, it is the entertainers who are in charge of the lifeboats. Because the rest of the crew has actual nautical duties, the kids from Fiesta Caliente are trained to man the lifeboats. If you ever have to get on a lifeboat, the person in charge of your safety will likely be a nineteen-year-old dancer from Tampa who just had a fight with his boyfriend about the new Rihanna video. James also told me that each lifeboat has a gun on it and that once a lifeboat is in the water, the performer–lifeboat captain is trained to shoot anyone who is disruptive. This is apparently legal in accordance with maritime law.

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African coastal entrepôts such as Ouidah played a critical role in the operation of the Atlantic slave trade, by helping to coordinate exchanges between hinterland suppliers and European ships, thereby accelerating their turn-round, and also by supplying them with provisions to feed the slaves on their voyage.14 In addition to extending and deepening understanding of the working of the slave trade, a study of Ouidah also represents a contribution to a second area of growing interest recently within African historical studies, urban history. Studies of urban history in Africa have tended to concentrate on the growth of towns during the colonial and post-colonial periods;15 but in West Africa especially, substantial towns existed already in the pre-colonial period, and Ouidah offers an exceptionally well-documented case-study of this earlier tradition of urbanism.16 Within southern Bénin, Ouidah provides the premier example of the ‘second generation’ of precolonial towns, which served as centres for European maritime trade: what have been termed, although somewhat infelicitously, ‘fort towns [villes-forts]’, in distinction from the ‘first generation’ of ‘palace-cities [cités-palais]’, which served as capitals of indigenous African states, such as Abomey.

From the point of view of admiralty law, this was a smart position for Morrell to take. The Limitation of Liability Act, passed in 1851, caps a shipowner’s liability to the value of the ship, if the accident is not caused by the vessel owner’s neglect or malfeasance. In other words, as long as a shipping company doesn’t interfere with its captain’s decisions while he or she is at sea, explains admiralty and maritime lawyer Chris Hug, vessel owners can limit their liability when the causes of the accident occurred without their “privity or knowledge.” Shipping was a risky business throughout the nineteenth century; Congress believed that its role was to shelter owners from lawsuits and egregious payouts. Now much of American admiralty law focuses on who is responsible for what, and much of it favors the shipowners. One could say that before the age of satellite communication, the Limitation of Liability Act made a certain amount of sense. When a vessel was out of sight of land, its owners had no means of contacting it. At that point, how could they prevent their officers from making fatal decisions? Holding a shipping company accountable didn’t seem fair. But these days, the law seems profoundly anachronistic. It could even encourage deliberate negligence.

It was left to Senator Isidor Rayner to conclude the hearings by saying: “As the ship was sinking, the strains of music were wafting over the deck. … It was a rallying cry for the living and the dying - to rally them not for life, but to rally them for their awaiting death. Almost face to face with their Creator, amid the chaos of this supreme and solemn moment, in inspiring notes the unison resounded through the ship. It told the victims of the wreck that there was another world beyond the seas, free from the agony of pain, and, though with somber tones, it cheered them on to their untimely fate. As the sea closed upon the heroic dead, let us feel that the heavens opened to the lives that were prepared to enter. “…If the melody that was rehearsed could only reverberate through this land ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee,’ and its echoes could be heard in these halls of legislation, and at every place where our rulers and representatives pass judgment and enact and administer laws, and at every home and fireside…and if we could be made to feel that there is a divine law of obedience and of adjustment…far above the laws that we formulate in this presence, then, from the gloom of these fearful hours we shall pass into the dawn of a higher service and of a better day, and then…the lives that went down upon this fated night did not go down in vain.

James also told me that each lifeboat has a gun on it and that once a lifeboat is in the water, the performer–lifeboat captain is trained to shoot anyone who is disruptive. This is apparently legal in accordance with maritime law.

Section 1. The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good behavior, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office. Section 2. The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;—to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;—to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;—to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;—to Controversies between two or more States;—between a State and Citizens of another State;—between Citizens of different States; —between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects. In all cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.