A Three-Front War on Piracy: Technological Protection, Legal Action and Education Programmes — Null Bock Haltung?

Abstract

Lely’s seventh Edition of Wharton’s Laws was a most useful compendium for English lawyers and other Commonwealth legal practitioners at the time. The expression is a reference to actual sea pirates whose acts were punishable by death upon a finding of guilt. Piracy is defined as:

[t]he commission of those acts of robbery and violence upon the sea, which if committed upon land would amount to felony. Pirates hold no commission or delegated authority from any sovereign or state empowering them to attack others. They can therefore only be regarded in the light of robbers. They are as Cicero has truly stated, the common enemies of all (communes hostes oninium); and the law of nations gives to everyone the right to pursue and exterminate them … but it is not allowed to kill them without trial … By the ancient common law of England, piracy … was held to be species of treason. (Wharton’s Laws, p. 627)

Pirata est hostis humani generis (A pirate is an enemy of the human race)

(in Lely, 1883, p. 628)