Courts Can Stop Japan!

Experts: Courts can stop Japan whale cull || The Australian:

"LAW experts today urged anti-whaling nations to end years of fruitless diplomatic pressure on Japan to stop scientific culling and use international courts to halt Tokyo.

As the International Whaling Commission annual conference began in Alaska, a group of law experts commissioned by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) urged Australia and other like-minded countries to get tougher with Japan.

'Japan's whaling programme is illegal and will remain so until a government takes steps to challenge this unlawful activity,' law professor and group chairman Don Rothwell said.

The IWC's 72 members are bitterly divided over a 25-year-old global moratorium on whaling which Japan and other nations such as Norway oppose.

Japan has long resisted pressure to stop scientific whaling and this year plans to hunt 935 minke and for the first time 50 humpbacks. Humpbacks were hunted nearly to extinction until protected by the IWC in 1966."

Is there really a simple way?

Can you really force them just to stop...
And actually believe that they will when told not to?

Will this really work any better?

So far Japan has taken international law into it's own hands to do as it pleases - continuing to conduct its (scientific) whaling activities.

Japan can't argue the fact that it is against international laws, of which are agreed and signed upon, that whaling is prohibited. Japan is breaking the law! Why not use the courts?

It won't be until Japan can find a way to change the laws to be otherwise, in their favor, that Japan's activities will actually be legal. But that hasn't happened yet. (Though, unfortunately may be soon at hand!)

However, the fact still remains... whaling is ILLEGAL, and Japan is in violation!

It would be fascinating to see if any of these things are taken seriously and what the outcome would be.