Law of the Sea Institute
381 Boalt Hall
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-7200
Phone: 510-642-5125
Fax: 510-643-2698
Email: losi@law.berkeley.edu

The Law of the Sea Institute (LOSI) is an international consortium of scholars that has played a major part in studies of ocean law since the 1970s, and was transferred to UC Berkeley in April 2002.  It is now a program of the Institute for Legal Research, and is administered by Professors Harry Scheiber and David Caron as Co-Directors. 

At Berkeley, LOSI has built on a long tradition of studies in ocean law that began with Professor Stefan Riesenfeld's work in the late 1930s.  For the last 25 years, research in this field at Berkeley has been supported largely by grants from the California Sea Grant program, Berkeley Law's Office of Dean, the UC Marine Council, and UCOP's Pacific Rim Research Program.  In addition, there has been the coordination of activities and varying types of support from other institutions, including the University of Washington and the Nansen Institute (Norway).  Beginning in 2006, LOSI joined with Inha University (Korea) to co-sponsor and co-organize a three-year series of major international conferences on ocean law and policy, the most recent held in November 2008 in Berkeley.

Prior to being reorganized and based on the Berkeley campus, LOSI published a distinguished series of conference proceedings and books on a range of subjects dealing with ocean policy and the law of the sea.  This tradition has continued under the auspices of the Institute with the first two volumes of the new Berkeley-based series:  Bringing New Law to Ocean Waters, published by Martinus Nijhoff/Brill; and "Multilateralism and International Ocean-Resources Law," published as a symposium in the San Diego International Law Journal.  The most recent publication, Maritime Boundary Disputes, Settlement Processes, and the Law of the Sea (edited by Seoung-Yong Hong and Jon M. Van Dyke, Martinus Nijhoff/Brill), draws on papers from the 2006 Seoul conference.  In late 2009, Brill is also expected to issue Oceans in the Nuclear Age, a book edited by David Caron and Harry Scheiber, and which will feature papers from the LOSI conference on this theme held at UC Berkeley in 2006.

Law of the Sea in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean: Unresolved Issues and Challenges - A Law of the Sea Institute Conference, March 22-24, 2007

The 2007 LOSI conference, "Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean: Unresolved Issues and Challenges," was hosted by the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, Texas A&M University Corpus Christi, on March 22-24, 2007 in Corpus Christi, Texas. The workshop-style conference was comprised of approximately 40 invited panel participants including judges from the International Law of the Sea Tribunal, leading scholars from United States and international universities, government officials from several nations, representatives from leading NGOs, and leaders from the U.S. and Mexican energy industry.

For more information, see the Harte Institute conference website.

Towards a Framework for the New Order of the Sea – A Law of the Sea Institute Conference, October 24-25, 2006

The Law of the Sea Institute co-organized and hosted a conference, “Towards a Framework for the New Order of the Sea,” held in downtown Seoul on October 24-25, 2006. The Korean co-host was Inha University, an institution in which ocean law studies are among the most prominent in East Asia.

The two-day program featured the participation of four judges of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and leading experts in ocean law from Boalt Hall and universities in Hawaii, Texas, Australia, Taiwan, Japan, Great Britain, Canada, and China. Among the issues addressed by the speakers, who included Professor David D. Caron, Co-Director of the Law of the Sea Institute, were territorial disputes concerning islands and maritime boundaries, the judicial and arbitrative settlement of ocean-law related disputes, sea level rise, and international regional issues and prospects in Asia, the Caribbean, and other global ocean areas.

In a welcoming address published in the program, Harry N. Scheiber, the Riesenfeld Professor of Law and History and Co-Director of the Law of the Sea Institute, pointed out that these issues are illustrative of the need for defining and stabilizing rules of law in areas of potential controversy on the global oceans.  Professor Scheiber also acknowledged with special thanks the interest that Dean Christopher Edley has shown in advancing the studies of ocean law at Boalt.
   
Boalt alumni were well represented on the conference panels.  Papers were presented by two LL.M. and J.S.D. graduates, both leading figures in the international ocean law community: Yann-Huei Song of the Academia Sinica, Taiwan; and Richard McLaughlin, Director of Texas A&M University’s Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies. Also presenting at the conference on the topic of marine security issues was Commander Glenn Sulmasy, a professor on leave from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and currently an LL.M. student at Boalt. Jennifer Jeffers, a first-year student at Boalt and a research assistant at the Law of the Sea Institute, also attended as part of the Boalt delegation. 

A major role was also played by Jon Van Dyke, Professor of Law in the University of Hawaii’s Richardson School and a distinguished researcher on the law of the sea. Professor Van Dyke is on the international advisory board of the Law of the Sea Institute and his writings on ocean law have appeared in the Ecology Law Quarterly and in several Law of the Sea Institute books and publications sponsored by Boalt’s program.

Financing of the conference was organized by Professor Seok-Woo Lee of Inha University, the principal conference co-planner with Professor Scheiber. Leading roles were also taken by Dr. Seoung-Yong Hong, President of Inha University, who has had a thirty-year career as a distinguished scholar on ocean law, and by Judge Choon-Ho Park of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and a board member of the Law of the Sea Institute.

Publication of the proceedings is being planned for 2007 by Inha University in cooperation with Boalt Hall and the Law of the Sea Institute.

For the conference program, click here.

Oceans in the Nuclear Age – A Law of the Sea Institute Project

sponsored by the UC Berkeley Institute of International Studies and the Ford Foundation
This project seeks to draw together various official documents of international law and other materials to give its users a better understanding of how nuclear weapons, materials, and waste interact with issues surrounding the welfare, use, and future of our oceans. For the ONA website, click here.