Bohrer on The "Jolly Roger"

Ziv Bohrer, Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Law, is publishing The ‘Jolly Roger’ (Pirate Flag) in International Law's Objects (Jessie Hohmann and Daniel Joyce, eds., 2019) (forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

Presently, a black flag with a skull-and-crossbones (the ‘Jolly Roger’) is merely a cultural icon for piracy. This chapter excavates the flag’s deep roots in international law. Part I uncovers that the flag used to be a laws-of-war signal for the intention to take no prisoners (‘deny quarter’). It was used not only by pirates. Intriguingly, the flag’s history aids in exposing misconceptions regarding criminal justice. Domestic criminal law is considered the traditional form of criminal justice, whereas international criminal law is considered a novel, post-WWII, creation. Piracy is deemed the only long-standing international crime, because for centuries universal jurisdiction has extended over it. However, historically, universal jurisdiction was applied not only to piracy, but also to felonies (crimes classified today as domestic) and war crimes. Part II discusses that actual history of criminal justice and shows that it and the Jolly Roger’s legal history were forgotten for similar reasons.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Goodrich on Islands, Pirates, Sovereignty, and Jurisdiction @CardozoLaw

Peter Goodrich, Cardozo School of Law, has published Mos Piraticus: On the Haunting and Infesting of the Seas, at 29 Law & Literature 193 (2017). Here is the abstract.

The island and the pirate raise the question of jurisdiction. The pirate haunts the seas, meaning that the pirate reminds the commonwealth of its past and of its others, the common ownership and shared possession of all things that Erasmus and then John Selden translate into the common inheritance of a shared knowledge. The adages and exempla of the humanists mix and mingle with the maxims and regulae of an inherited law whose hieroglyph is not, as Sir Edward Coke argues, the Crown, but rather the double D of the Decretals and the Digest.

The full text is available online by subscription.