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This article seeks to provide the reader with an overview of the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) nonproliferation regime relevant to marine security operations and to alert the reader to shortfalls in that regime that might frustrate at-sea efforts to interdict WMD shipments. It begins with a general description of the international approach to combating proliferation of WMD and then examines the individual regimes for nuclear weapons, chemical weapons (CW), biological-toxin weapons (BTW) and WMD delivery systems, such as missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles. It next traces the development of several resolutions by the United Nations Security Council that target global terrorism and WMD proliferation. The article does not directly address maritime operations in support of Security Council resolutions imposing economic sanctions on a particular nation, nor does it address the war-time doctrines of neutrality, visit and search for contraband or blockade. The article concludes that while the global nonproliferation regime has progressively developed over the past several decades, it remains incomplete.

This article begins with an examination of the intelligence needs of those engaged in maritime counterproliferation efforts. It then turns to risk-management decision making under conditions of uncertainty, focusing on decisions at the operational level and exploring the question of whether decision strategies in the WMD context should seek to minimize false-negative or false-positive errors. It concludes that even vastly improved maritime intelligence will not obviate the need for national and operational commanders to make decisions under conditions of uncertainty and that such decisions should be made on the basis of established risk-assessment and management principles. At the same time, risk management analysis must be sensitive to the public's attitude toward risk. When possession of WMD is at stake, sound risk management that gives appropriate weight to the public's preferences might well call for action even where the relevant event probabilities are quite low.

A century ago the United States Supreme Court issued its decision in The Osceola [189 U.S. 158 (1903)], announcing four legal propositions that controlled personal injury claims by seamen at the time. On the 100th anniversary of the Court's decision, the four admiralty law professors contributing to this symposium take the opportunity to critically examine the Court's renowned decision, Congress' responses to the decision, and the effect of both The Osceola's four propositions and the responsive legislation on the remedies available to injured maritime workers in the 21st century. In the first of the three articles that follow, Professor Steven Friedell mines the archival record behind this important decision to reveal numerous factual aspects of the case that were, until now, largely overlooked or misstated by the official reports. Professor Joel Goldstein then scrutinizes the reasoning and support for each of the case's famous four propositions, noting the Court's comparative law approach, the effect of the four propositions on uniformity in maritime law and also their summary, even elliptical, phraseology. In the third article, Dean Thomas Galligan takes aim at the fourth of The Osceola's propositions, revealing its illogic and its failure to promote the exercise of due care by ship masters and fellow servants. Dean Galligan demonstrates why those who believe the Jones Act rendered The Osceola irrelevant to a contemporary maritime personal injury claim should reconsider.

Televised presidential news conferences marked an advancement in media history; for the first time, tools of electronic journalism were used in covering them. Yet as early as 1955, when the first TV news conference was held under Dwight Eisenhower, it was also known that these events could benefit a president at least as much as the journalistic community. In opening news conferences to cameras and microphones, Eisenhower sought a means of channeling information directly to millions of home viewers in a way that could not be mediated by skeptical reporters, particularly those who wrote for newspapers and magazines. Despite complaints by print reporters, Eisenhower took steps to make TV news conferences a fixture, his press secretary conceiving them as a "very potent way of getting the president's personality and viewpoints" across to the American public.