Piracy, Sovereignty, and International Violence: The Pirate as an Anti-Sovereign in International Law

Abstract

The paper begins by noting that the pirate is at once integral to ideas of modern political sovereignty and an anti-sovereign. In so doing, it makes two related points. First, that the image of the pirate as hostis humanis generis “ an enemy of all  “ was essential to early conceptions of statehood and territorial integrity, as advanced in the works of thinkers like Cicero and later Emer de Vattel. The existence of the pirate as an existential threat “ whether in actuality or in rhetoric “ not only licensed the state to consolidate power but also permitted it to monopolize coercive violence. Here, the paper will pick up on more modern theories advanced by Schmidt, Agamben, and Heller-Roazen, among others. Second, the paper draws connections between these dual historic roles of the pirate and current international legal responses to piracy in the Gulf of Aden. It argues that characterizations of the pirate as an anti-sovereign and antagonist permit the state to exclude the pirate from the traditional protections sovereigns extend to their citizens: law and legal status. Following from this, the paper considers whether in attacking one form of sovereignty piracy in this region is against the idea in all forms, or whether pirates might be asserting a competing vision of sovereignty. The paper ends by examining the failure to extend human rights protections to pirates, the impulse to bypass due process obligations, and the militarized character of anti-piracy prosecutions in eastern Africa. It shows that these are the result of a complex historical process that has seen international law at once shaped by and restricted by the practice of piracy and rhetoric about piracy.