Winston Churchill suggested for this reason that the Nazi captives be shot out of hand as a substitute for the Allies pursuing a show trial of dubious legality. Though there are treaties going back to the postwar period which are a decent first attempt to create an international law of war crimes, they are of confused and weak status. From a strictly legal standpoint, Pinochet should go free, though the college student in me would like to see him locked up for the rest of his life. The morality of fishing would itself be a fit subject for an essay one day in the Ethical Spectacle . A particularly serious problem is that endangered air breathing species, such as dolphins and sea turtles, get enmeshed in the big nets and drown.
Turtles also have more cachet than snail darters or or other ugly small fish species.
Over the years, the U.S. Congress has legislated various solutions to protect these highly visible animals. Foreign caught tuna and now shrimp are barred from sale in this country unless certified to have been caught in a fashion less likely to kill dolphins or turtles. As I mentioned last month , our government's laudable desire to protect endangered species has run afoul of its even stronger desire to promote uniformity of international commercial rules via the World Trade Organization . One of the cause celebres of the Seattle demonstrators was the fate of the turtles under a WTO ruling that the US cannot legally exclude shrimp caught without TED's. Like Spain prosecuting Pinochet, the U.S. is attempting to fill an international vacuum by taking domestic action to adress an international problem.