It has become rather common practice to label the whale hunt in the Antarctic carried out by Japanese whaling ships as ‘illegal’. The sources for this claim are manifold, and this reviewer was witness to the application of this claim at the 66th meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in Portoroz, Slovenia, in October 2016. In other words, it is first and foremost whaling opponents that maintain that, especially after the ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Whaling in the Antarctic case in 2014, the conduct of whaling for scientific purposes in Antarctic waters is illegal. However, whaling proponents hold that, while indeed the ICJ ruled that the research carried out under the Japanese JARPA-II programme does not meet the criteria of ‘scientific whaling’, in principle, and in accordance with Article VIII of the 1946 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW), whaling is, even in spite of the 1986 whaling moratorium, legal for scientific purposes.

The present edited volume approaches the judgement of the ICJ from a multitude of angles and the legal scholar trained or untrained in international law will be taken through a lesson of sophisticated legal scholarship and analysis. A look at the table of contents already shows that the editors have attempted, and in my opinion very successfully, to include different sides of the whaling debate. Seven out of 11 contributions are written by Japanese experts on the whaling issue. One of these, Professor Joji Morishita, is the Japanese commissioner at the IWC. Many of the papers also stem from a conference on the Whaling in the Antarctic case held at Kobe University from 31 May to 1 June 2014. Moreover, the book is subdivided into five parts: The law of evidence and standard of review; Substantive law aspects: the law of treaties; Procedural law aspects; Institutional implications of the judgement; and Domestic and international implications of the judgement.

To this end, the book is not only an academic, scholarly book in which legal theory is explained practically using the Whaling in the Antarctic as a case in point, but a highly political one too. To exemplify this, let us take a closer look at Malgosia Fitzmaurice's chapter The Whaling Convention and thorny issues of interpretation (Chapter 3) and the aforementioned contribution by Joji Morishita IWC and the ICJ judgement (Chapter 8). The former constitutes the longest chapter in the book and gives a profound insight into the differences of interpreting the provisions of the ICRW, starting with its overall objectives (and purposes). The underlying point of reference, the ‘substantive law aspect’, so to speak, is the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) of 1969 and how it is applicable in the context of the ICRW. While providing the reader with her own opinions on the way the convention can be interpreted, these opinions follow the submissions and pleadings of the different parties, first and foremost Australian and Japanese, the judgement itself and the opinions of different judges and in how far Fitzmaurice (dis)agrees with the way the ICRW is interpreted. By doing so, Fitzmaurice enables the reader to understand how complex the issue of the whaling context really is and that both sides bring forth valid arguments in support of their claims. Moreover, the chapter brings the broader perspective of treaty interpretation to the fore and the complexity associated with it, especially in light of the role of the court itself and its way of dealing with the provisions of ‘scientific whaling’ in the ICRW.

Morishita's paper in this fascinating book takes a rather critical approach to the issue of how the judgement was received by media outlets and anti-whaling non-governmental organisations. This, of course, does not come as a surprise, and if read by somebody with an anti-whaling attitude could be considered as biased, given the author's position in the whaling debates. However, Morishita does not argue based on his own or his government's opinions. Rather, he looks at the deliberations within the IWC regarding the adoption of the whaling moratorium in 1982 (starting for the season 1985/86). Following the official records, the moratorium was concluded as an establishment of catch limits and not as a ‘ban’ that makes whaling illegal per se. Nor did the judgement label Japanese scientific whaling ‘illegal’ as such. Instead, it requires Japan to alter its research objectives and does neither judge on other whale-related research programmes, such as in the North Pacific, nor on any future research programmes in the Antarctic (NEWREP-A). Not surprisingly, as Rothwell shows in The whaling case: an Australian perspective (Chapter 9), the Australian response as the country having initiated the lawsuit was rather modest. The observations of this reviewer at the IWC66 meeting in 2016, however, reaffirm Morishita's claims that those opposed to whaling still treat the judgement as rendering scientific whaling in the Antarctic carried out by Japan as illegal. That, as is being shown throughout the book, is not the case.

There are certainly many things to be said about whaling, the judgement in the Whaling in the Antarctic case and the way politics, emotions and general perceptions on human–animal relations contribute to the dysfunctional manner in which the IWC operates. The present volume, however, takes a rather ‘dry’ and ‘matter-of-fact’ approach in which the authors eloquently lay out their arguments based on the legal nature of the ICJ judgement. The reader also gains significant insight into the way the whaling discourse is shaped and how it is evolving (or not). The book is therefore a crucial part of the scholarly and political landscape surrounding whaling and should be part of the library of anyone who is interested in the whale hunt. Needless to say, other areas of human–animal interactions, such as marine management, seal hunting, etc., also play a role when reading through this book.