Profile
Captain Norris is the U. S. Coast Guard representative to the International Law Department staff. He reported aboard in August 2010 after completing a 4-year tour in Honolulu, Hawaii, as the Staff Judge Advocate for the Fourteenth Coast Guard District, which encompasses 12.2 million square miles of the western and central Pacific Ocean. Prior to that, from 2002-2006, Captain Norris was an assistant professor of law at the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut. From 1998-2002, Captain Norris was a marine casualty investigator at Marine Safety Office New Orleans. His first tour of duty in the Coast Guard, from 1994-1998, was as a staff attorney at the Coast Guard Maintenance and Logistics Command, Norfolk, Virginia.
He also served a four-year tour as a Navy division officer from 1985-1989 aboard the USS KIDD (DDG 993). During that tour, he qualified as a Surface Warfare Officer, and deployed to the Persian Gulf during Operation Earnest Will.
Captain Norris is a member of the Marine Affairs faculty, Roger Williams University School of Law, where he serves as an adjunct professor teaching a 3-credit Law of the Sea seminar.
He also serves as a collateral-duty Coast Guard military judge. As such, he presides over special courts-martial of Coast Guard personnel throughout the country.
He received a BA in biology from the University of Virginia in 1984, and a JD (with honors) from the University of Florida in 1993.
His publications include:
"The Other Law of the Sea," Naval War College Review, summer 2011
"The Fight for Fish," Naval Institute Proceedings, August 2010
"Bilateral Agreements: They’re Not Just for Drugs Anymore," Proceedings of the Marine Safety & Security Council, summer 2009
"Four Questions Simplify the Use of Force," Naval Institute Proceedings, June 2009
"The Hawaii Superferry – Consternation, Agitation, and Litigation," published in both the Coast Guard Academy Alumni Bulletin (August 2008) and the ABA Homeland Security Newsletter (Volume 1, No. 4, summer 2008)
Author/Editor, "Cases and Materials on Military Justice," McGraw-Hill Primis Custom Publishing, ISBN 0-07-353689-X – principal textbook used for Military Justice course, Coast Guard Academy.
Editor, "Maritime Law Enforcement, Cases and Materials, 4th Ed.," McGraw-Hill Custom Publishing, ISBN 0-07-353682-2 – principal textbook used for Maritime Law Enforcement course, Coast Guard Academy.
"To Divulge or Not to Divulge: The Ability of an Agricultural Researcher to Avoid CERCLA’s Affirmative Disclosure Requirements," Florida State University Journal of Land Use and Environmental Law, Vol. 9, No. 2, Spring 1994. This article won the 1992 American Agricultural Law Association national writing competition.