The Ocean Law and Policy Program at UC Berkeley is one of several housed in the campus's Center for the Study of Law and Society, and is devoted to research and support of teaching in the law and policy of marine and coastal resources. Attention is given both to international ocean law and to domestic law and policy, including issues of special importance to the State of California. Among the projects that have been pursued by Berkeley faculty and students in the last decade are:

1. International fishery management, regionalism, and Law of the Sea.
2. The "pre-history" to 1970 of privatization concepts, involving the interplay of work in biology, economics, and law.
3. The use of sanctions by the United States to enforce environmental norms and policies.
4. Japanese-US-Allied relations and the Pacific fisheries, 1937 to the present, as an element of the background to Law of the Sea.
5. The Biodiversity Convention and the Law of the Sea.
6. Exploitation of seabed genetic resources.
7. Comparative study of ocean port facilities management in Hong Kong and the Netherlands in comparison with the United States.
8. The Magnuson Fisheries Conservation and Management Act, and its successor programs in U.S. management of marine fisheries.
9. U.S. policies on tuna in relation to international agreements and institutions.
10. Global warming and rising ocean levels as a problem for island states.
11. Legal norms and the jurisprudence of coastal community claims in national and ocean law.
12. Indigenous claims and the regulation of whaling activity, including the international moratorium.

Many of these projects have been supported by the California Sea Grant College Program, and some ten Sea Grant Trainees have been associated with the projects funded by CSGP since the mid-1980s. A graduate seminar in the Boalt Hall School of Law curriculum is taught by the principal faculty members in the Ocean Law and Policy Program. In addition, faculty members associated with the Program have been active in national and international advisory roles. There has been a close working association between the Program and the Boalt Hall School of Law's international studies program, and the latter has sponsored visiting scholars from government agencies and other universities. Several conferences have been sponsored by the program, the latest being a major international conference in 1998 on the Law of the Sea in the UN Year of the Ocean.

The Program is also a founding member and part of the directorate of the consortium group Ocean Governance Study Group, and has hosted two of that organization's annual conferences on marine affairs. Principal faculty members in the Program are Professors of Law Harry N. Scheiber (currently director), David D. Caron, and Robert Kagan. Also actively associated in research and conference activity are Christopher Carr and John Briscoe, both engaged in law practice in San Francisco.

The Program is based in the Center for the Study of Law and Society,
2240 Piedmont Ave., UC Berkeley, CA 94270-2150.

Address phone inquiries to:
Prof. Scheiber (510 643 9788) or
Prof. Caron (510 642 7249).