When Naked Came the Doctrine of

Abstract

In the unique novel set in South Florida, Naked Came the Manatee, thirteen talented authors created a "literary game of telephone" whereby each wrote a chapter and then passed it on to the next contributor, who did his best to craft a plot line. The result was a novel of "wildly fluctuating styles and more crazy plot curves than a daytime drama, but thanks to these ... masters of the craft, this roller coaster of a book is almost as much fun to read as it obviously was to write." After reading the recent opinions of the fifteen judges from the International Court of Justice in the Case Concerning Oil Platforms (Islamic Republic of Iran v. United States of America), one cannot help but believe the Court has just issued its legal version of "Naked Came the Doctrine of Self-Defense." The masters of the craft of legal writing have combined fluctuating legal styles, jurisprudential plot turns, and creative avoidances with tortured analysis to produce a roller coaster of an opinion with more separate and dissenting opinions than the original novel, now set in the Hague.