Cody, Stephen, Oceanic Impunity (July 31, 2024). Southern California Law Review, Vol.97, No.3, p.637, 2024, Suffolk University Law School Research Paper No. 24-10, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4912229 – “Ocean protection is essential to avoid climate disaster. Phytoplankton,seaweeds, and sea grasses produce more than half of Earth’s oxygen—exceeding all terrestrial forests and plants combined—and absorb about ninety percent of the heat generated by rising emissions. Yet oceans continue to be sites for brazen environmental law violations, from illegal fishing to toxic dumping. International criminal law has largely ignored these crimes,even when they amount to offshore environmental atrocities. Meanwhile,legal structures for ocean governance tend to focus on regulatory compliance, self-policing, and dispute resolution, all of which have proved inadequate to protect oceans and coastal communities. Without more global enforcement, environmental criminals will continue to operate with impunity at sea, even as their crimes exacerbate existential climate threats. Mare liberum or freedom of the seas has been a foundational principle of ocean law for centuries, dating back to the writings of Hugo Grotius. But unconditional free seas are no longer defensible in the Anthropocene. Theidea of free seas falsely presumes an inexhaustible ocean too vast to govern.Consequently, governance models based solely on the principle of free seascontinue to legitimate careless national policies, destructive relations with marine ecosystems, and exploitation of vulnerable ocean environments.Moving forward the international community must defend oceans as theheritage of all humankind and work together to protect seas against serious environmental harms. This Article develops a blueprint for targeted forms of international criminalization that would deter offshore ecological destruction. It defends international prosecutions for a range of oceanic environmental crimes,including marine pollution, illegal fishing, and seabed destruction caused by illegal trawling or deep-sea mining. Beyond theories of retribution ordeterrence, global criminal prosecutions for environmental harms have expressive value during this time of climate crisis. International criminal convictions showcase humanity’s shared concern for ocean life and marine environments. Criminalization of grave ocean harms would signal an ecocentric shift in international criminal law and aid multilateral efforts to protect marine environments and to promote new legal duties to nature.”