Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly
PIRACY: THE CURRENT CRIME
Alan D. Wiener
Attorney-at-Law, Miami, Florida.
Today’s legal scholars and law enforcement agencies consider the crime of piracy to be primarily of historical interest. Within the last decade we have viewed the resurgence of crime and violence on the high seas. Marine underwriters, law enforcement agencies, commercial interests, Congressional Committees, international organizations and individual boat owners have witnessed the progressive increase in violence upon the world’s waterways. At the same time the vitality of the legal concept of piracy has atrophied from lack of use.
It is difficult at this point to discern just how large the problem is in the United States. The marine insurance underwriters have no system established to collect data on the total economic loss from piracy. Likewise there is no established reporting system or uniform policy for law enforcement amongst the Navy Drug Enforcement Administration, Coast Guard, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Customs Service, and a multitude of State and local police and marine patrol agencies. A study has estimated that in 1975 the economic loss to boat owners and the insurance industry was over 60 million dollars. One insurance company reported that their losses due to theft for the five-year period between 1972 and 1977 increased more than tenfold.1 It is the objective of this article to explain the ancient municipal and international crimes of piracy, their importance and relevance as crimes today, and to demonstrate the need for renewed attention to today’s piracy.
In 1926 the League of Nations Committee of Experts for the Progressive Codification of International Law expressed their opinion that:
“According to International Law, piracy consists in sailing the seas for private ends without authorization from the government of any state with the object of committing depredations upon property or acts of violence against persons. The pirate attacks merchant ships of any and every nation without making any distinction except insofar as will enable him to escape punishment for his misdeeds. He is a sea robber, pillaging by force of arms, stealing or destroying the property of others and committing outrages of all kinds upon individuals.
“Piracy has as its field of operation that vast domain which is termed ‘the high seas’. It constitutes a crime against the security of Commerce on the high seas, where alone it can be committed. The same acts committed in the territorial waters of a state do not come within the scope of International Law, but fall within the competence of the local sovereign power”.2
Piracy possesses a split personality in that it is both a municipal crime (as defined by an individual State) and an offense against the law of nations (as defined by individual States, treaties, customary international practice) which is difficult to apply to factual situations. The legal authorities have long questioned the meaning and justification of the traditional assertions that piracy is an offense or crime against the law of nations. Although the nations throughout the world have long accepted that piracy is an international crime, there has been no universal acceptance of what constitutes piracy.
1 Robert D. Chapman, Hearings before the Sub-committee on Coast Guard and Navigation of the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries House of Representatives, 91st Congress, 1st Session, on The Effectiveness of the Coast Guard’s Efforts in Maritime Criminal Law Enforcement in the Areas of Yacht Hijacking, Sea-Borne Drug Interidiction, Organized Boat Theft, and Marine Insurance Fraud, at p. 147 (1977).
2 League of Nations Doc. 1926 V. 5, at p. 2, reprinted in 20 Am. J. Int. L. Spec. Supp. 223 (1926).
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