I.

After 200 years of quiescence, maritime piracy has recently reemerged as a major economic and humanitarian problem. Whereas piracy was historically associated with such places as the Barbary Coast or the Caribbean, the modern version is centered on Somalia, one of the poorest and most dysfunctional countries in the world. In the past few years, Somali pirates have seized more than 179 vessels, taken more than 1,000 crewmembers and passengers hostage, and extracted more than $400 million in ransom. A recent report found that piracy off the coast of Somalia cost the world more than $12 billion in 2012 – the price of everything from counter-piracy naval operations to increased insurance rates for commercial shippers to ransom payments. Piracy is also significantly hampering the delivery of food aid to perennially drought-stricken Somalia, resulting in untold thousands of deaths. Although the world saw a temporary downturn in Somali piracy in 2013 and 2014, many experts believe the problem will soon get much worse as the international community begins to draw down its anti-pirate armada off the east coast of Africa. Meanwhile, piracy is proliferating to Africa's west coast, transforming the threat into a two-ocean challenge.

In combating modern piracy, one of the key initiatives has been the increase in prosecutions across the globe. As Professor Eugene Kontorovich observes, Somali piracy has become perhaps the highest-volume area of international criminal law by national courts prosecuting extraterritorial crimes. Between 2008 and 2012, more than 1,000 Somali pirates were brought to justice in 20 different countries. Government attorneys have creatively and aggressively prosecuted these modern pirates with a panoply of new legal authorities and approaches. Meanwhile, modern pirates are increasingly represented by sophisticated defense counsel who have raised novel issues never before litigated. As a result, there have been far more developments in the law relating to piracy in the past 6 years than there were in the preceding 200 years.