Law of the Sea

The Law of the Sea refers to a collective body of jurisprudence that has developed largely over the past three centuries. The fundamental question involved how much territoriality a state could claim over the sea, as an extension of its shoreline. Some European countries began claiming a “territorial sea” adjacent to their coastlines in the late 16th century, but no internationally recognized standard existed, and such zones were arbitrarily established. As European states became more involved in maritime commerce and exploration, the indeterminate character of the territorial sea led to frequent wars, especially between England and the Netherlands. The two countries fought four wars between 1652 and 1784, and one of the main causes of this extended string of conflicts was the struggle over control of shipping lanes, maritime resources, and territorial waters. By the beginning of the 19th century, a number of countries were claiming a stretch of water adjacent to their coastlines of three to four nautical miles, although some demanded a somewhat wider swath of water. No wars erupted from these conflicting claims, although disputes sometimes occurred. Most of these disagreements were resolved by bilateral or multilateral treaties, but it still remained the purview of any sovereign maritime state to declare and enforce the extent of its territorial waters—no universally accepted and recognized code governed such claims. The formation of the League of Nations in the wake of World War I led to greater efforts to establish global standards governing the seas, although few treaties were actually formalized, and the generally accepted limit of a three- to four-mile territorial sea was maintained. However, the relative stability brought about by this arrangement was shaken by the so-called Truman Proclamation of 1945, in which the United States asserted sovereign control over the resources of the continental shelf. The Truman Proclamation set in motion a cycle