Excellent paper and I recommend checking out the whole thing with the provided link below. The section that I was particularly interested in is the International Law portion. I continue to hear arguments against the Letter of Marque, and no one really has a firm legal foundation for their argument. Or at least that’s what it seems to me. It is just assumed or the ‘opinio juris’ is that issuing Letters of Marque is a no go, and this paper clearly identifies the counter argument to this belief.
So that is why I posted this, and I hope that the legal counsels of countries that are looking for arguments for firing up their LoM or introducing legislation for such a thing, will have some resource to draw from. And what is really nice with legal papers like this, is they are heavily sourced and footnoted, just so they can back up their arguments. The footnotes alone are worth reading, just because they indicate how much the LoM has been talked about in legal circles. Lot’s of opinions, and this is a good collection of them.
In this particular section I posted below, the author identifies two reasons why states believe they are prohibited from privateering and issuing letters of marque, based on their interpretation of the Declaration of Paris and of International Law. One is opinio juris and the other is state practice that influences this interpretation.
State practice refers to “consistent conduct,” while opinio juris means States follow the rule out of “belief” that they are legally obligated to behave in a certain manner.
One of the reasons why I started the Letter of Marque category is to remind states of the practice of privateering, and to remind those who are establishing a legal basis for the act, that countries like the US have a history of consistent conduct when using privateers(it was used in multiple conflicts). And because the US is not a signatory of the Declaration of Paris, then that is interpreted as an ‘objection’ to banning the practice. This is key if you are to prove a state’s ‘belief’, and the fact that the LoM still exists in the US’s most cherished legal document called the Constitution, then we can certainly deduct the US ‘opinio juris’.
The author made this legal argument very well. So if the US could care less about the Declaration of Paris, then why do these other countries continue to hang on to a ‘belief’ that they have to abide by this document? Especially as their navies continue to be downgraded by reduced budgets, or those navies get over extended with other commitments. And especially as piracy is attacking the very life blood of these countries or commerce. National interest should be focused on doing whatever it takes to stop this, and the LoM is just one tool to help with that endeavor.
Finally, I would like to also point out the fact that this was written by a ‘naval Surface Warfare Officer’ and a ‘Judge Advocate student at the Naval Justice School in Newport, R.I’. That indicates to me a paper influenced by naval military history and thought, and the legalities behind implementing the LoM in modern times. It is also a paper that can show the way for how to implement the LoM to help in the war against today’s virus called piracy. Very cool and check it out. –Matt
Structuring a Sustainable Letters of Marque Regime: How Commissioning Privateers Can Defeat the Somali Pirates
Lieutenant Todd Emerson Hutchins
June 9, 2011
(this is just one section of the paper)
THE PRESENT STATE OF LETTERS OF MARQUE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW AND AMERICAN JURISPRUDENCE
Many contemporary international law scholars contend that the Paris Declaration “by formal accession or tacit acceptance by all the powers [has become] an established part of the general body of [customary] international law.”273 Proponents of a broad prohibition on privateering allege that customary international law has formed since the Paris Declaration. “[I]nternational custom, as evidence of a general practice accepted as law” is recognized as a source of international law under Article 38 of the International Court of Justice Statute.274 It “consists of rules of law derived from the consistent conduct of States acting out of the belief that the law required them to act that way.”275 The two key elements are state practice and opinio juris.276 State practice refers to “consistent conduct,” while opinio juris means States follow the rule out of “belief” that they are legally obligated to behave in a certain manner.277 Admittedly, the distinction is frustrating “because it is difficult to determine what states believe as opposed to what they say.”278