Jan 12, 2015 / General
This Thursday: Seminar with Marc Mangel
Thursday, January 15, 4:30
Fishery Sciences Auditorium
Marc Mangel
Distinguished Research Professor of Mathematical Biology, Center for Stock Assessment Research and Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, University of California, Santa Cruz
Whales, science, and scientific whaling in the International Court of Justice
I will briefly describe the history that lead to Australia initiating a case in the International Court of Justice (ICJ; the Court) in 2010 challenging the legality under international law of the Japanese special permit whaling program in the Southern Ocean. This case bore directly down on what it means to have a program for purposes of scientific research. I will then describe my involvement as the Independent Scientific Expert witness called by Australia before oral proceedings in The Hague and then during the oral proceedings. I will explain the reasoning that the Court used in the judgment that JARPA II is not for purposes of scientific research that it delivered on 31 March 2014 and discuss the implications of the decision for other situations in which science and law interact.
Marc Mangel was educated at the University of Illinois (BS in Physics 1971 with High Honors, MS in Biophysics 1972), where he was an EJ James Scholar, NIH Trainee in biophysics and elected to Phi Kappa Phi and Phi Beta Kappa, and the University of British Columbia (PhD in Applied Mathematics and Statistics, with a focus on Mathematical Biology, 1978). He worked for the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA, the research and development center for the US Navy) from Nov 1977–Aug 1980. Work done for CNA lead to the Koopman Paper Prize from the Operations Research Society of America (1982) and the JASA Applications Paper award from the American Statistical Association (1983).