The Law Never Forgets By Emily Hutchens Summary

In 2013, the Wisconsin International Law Journal published Emily Hutchens article, “The Law Never Forgets: An Analysis of the Elephant Poaching Crisis, Failed Policies, and Potential Solutions,” focuses on the threat of elephant populations, failure to ban illegal poaching and trading, and possible solutions. Hutchens also points out the reason for why poaching has increased so much. The author provides a background information on the legal trading way back to the 1970s and 1980s and how poaching started to increase again in 2013. Hutchens described the ban at the beginning stopped all the trading market at the time and reduced the threat to elephant lives. But with a disagreement from Hong Kong and Japan, the trading from Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia became a delicious offer for poachers in making the profit. That was how illegal poaching made its way back. The introduction of the
This part of the article focuses mainly on the development of protection law worldwide. The involvement of the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) members in order to prevent elephants’ extinction. The author talks about the creation of CITES; the first sub-point was covered with detail explanations show readers how CITES was created. Readers might or might not familiar with CITES, so the background information would be a big help here. The second sub-point submerged deeply on how CITES was working to fight for the right of wild animals in general and elephants in particular. Movements of the organization around the 70s and 80s, the fight to ban ivory trading. The author describes the failure; the hardship CITES’ members went through. That paragraph notices readers and helps them understand a little more about the topic. Hutchens uses statistic and numbers to demonstrate a great improvement of the elephant population in Kenya. The ban successfully increased the number from 17,000 to 26,000 in eleven