by Rosemarie Quintal

Created on: July 14, 2009   Last Updated: February 05, 2010

The ability to link through URLs directly to laws verbatim is an important contribution the Internet makes to the public generally.  I assume that anyone interested in a Guide to laws protecting whales will also be interested in reading those laws. This essay has frequent links to laws. The reader can open the URL or copy the URL into a search engine and find the law and read the law that protects whales. Attorneys have professional ethical rules requiring that lawyers assist the community and understanding what the practice of law is. Reading laws and understanding what the law requires, what the law excludes, what the law includes are all part of any lawyer's law career. The guide to laws protecting whales beings with how the Supreme Court weighed whale protection versus national security. However the Court reviews the Navy's compliance with certain safeguards for whales nevertheless.

Reading the rest of this essay about laws that protect whales, the reader will gain a knowledge that whales move from one ocean to another and one country to another. Jurisdiction includes the ability of Congress of any Court to have the territorial authority or in personam and in situs jurisdictions. Courts can't protect whales in Canada here in the United States or can they if those whales spend half their year living in Hawaii or The Pacific?  These are the challenges for law that protect whales. Once whales are here there are Stat end County laws as well as Federal and International legal agreements that protect whales.

The first source of law for whale protection in the United States is the United States Supreme Court. The U.S. Court decides whether Congressional laws like the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, (amended 1982)http://www.nepa.gov/nepa/regs/nepa/nepaeqia.htm; or The Endangered Species Act; or the Coastal Zone Management Act, all laws that protect whales, can be exempted on the theory that our country's national defense is of vital importance and the need for a naval or other military exercise mitigates the protection of whales under our United States laws. People can view and read Supreme Court opinions including the controversy between the U.S. Navy and the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) at http://yubanet.com/enviro/Endangered-right-whales-fo und-where-presumed-extinct.php

Last year in 2008 the NRDC sued the Navy in California over the possibility of whale destruction. The Supreme Court with dissenting opinions held for the U.S.

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>