War is back. After a thirty-year hiatus after the end of the Cold War, armed conflict is on the rise around the globe. The news in the West has been dominated by horrific wars in Ukraine and Gaza, but those conflicts, terrible as they are, are only part of a deeper trend. The decades from 1989 until 2022 had relatively few wars and war-related deaths, but the years 2022 and 2023 were the most violent since the end of the Cold War.
This essay explores the recent history and current trajectory of the Law of the Sea—including China’s recent foray into the Arctic; the debate over deep seabed mining; the South China Sea dispute; and the human rights and environmental challenges present in the oceans--via a review of four books spanning maritime politics, history, and law.
A key finding to emerge from the ongoing work of the special rapporteur of the International Law Commission (ILC or Commission) on subsidiary means for the determination of rules of international law(1) concerns the systemic lack of diversity in the use of teachings.(2) This finding carries important implications for the legitimacy of using subsidiary means, particularly regarding whose voices are privileged or silenced in legal determination.(3) The special rapporteur noted that international courts such as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) had used teachings from a remarkably narrow cohort of predominantly Western, male voices from elite institutions-perspectives that inevitably reflect a limited range of viewpoints and cultural contexts.
