legal

TSI Welcomes its new Director of Legal Strategy, Dario Mutabdzija

The Seasteading Institute is excited to welcome Dario Mutabdzija as our new Director of Legal Strategy! Dario will lead our efforts to navigate the highly unique and challenging legal issues pertaining to seasteading, including maritime law, legal restrictions on seastead citizens, long-term sovereignty issues, and more. Expect to see a seasteading legal overview whitepaper from Dario in early 2011, similar to our 2010 engineering overview.

IBRU State of Sovereignty: Day 1, Sessions

Regimes for Managing Maritime Space, 1 April, Track 2 Session 1

Maritime Policing: A Sea of Change? From the Exercise of Sovereignty over Maritime Space towards the Enforcement of the Global Oceans Legal Framework, Ms Patricia Jimenez Kwast, University of Oxford, UK

Enforcement/Policing of the Law of the Sea, not by ship owners, ports, etc. Broad topic, global philosophical aspects.

Policing Powers at Sea – Background & Legal Framework

Has a picture of a pirate flag!

Royal Caribbean Bond Prospectus

In case you wonder – is this flag of convenience thing real? Will investors really invest in a company in some obscure foreign jurisdiction? This is from the risks section of a 2001 bond offering by Royal Caribbean (which I think was about $1B or so):

ENFORCEABILITY OF CIVIL LIABILITIES

We are a Liberian corporation and our selling shareholders are foreign corporations or partnerships.

February Maritime Law Meeting

In February 2009, legal research volunteer Jorge & I had lunch with a noted international expert on the Law of the Sea, who we’ll call X. We mainly discussed near-shore medical tourism as the initial business model. Here are my notes from the meeting:

There is a tension between credibility and regulation of flagging states. The ones which will monitor you the least also have the least credibility in the world of international law. Patri & Jorge believe we should follow a laddered approach. Start with whoever will take us – Tuvalu, Marshall Islands, Liberia, Panama. See how it goes.