Law of the Sea

THE LAW OF THE SEA is a compilation of international and national laws regulating the demarcation of areas of maritime jurisdiction appertaining to maritime states. While its origins were military and defensive today it focuses on respective rights of resource exploitation—oil and minerals as well as fisheries. The importance of international innocent passage via geopolitical choke points and along multinational rivers also is relevant.

The oceans had long been subject to the freedom of the seas and innocent passage doctrine, a principle put forth in the 17th century designed essentially to limit national rights and jurisdiction over the oceans to a narrow belt of sea surrounding a nation’s coastline. The remainder of the seas was proclaimed to be free to all and belonging to none. While this situation prevailed into the 20th century, by mid-century there was an impetus to extend national claims over offshore resources.

There was growing concern over the toll taken on coastal fish stocks by long-distance fishing fleets and over the threat of pollution and wastes from transport ships and oil tankers carrying noxious cargoes that plied sea routes across the globe. The hazard of pollution was ever present, threatening coastal resorts and all forms of ocean life. The navies of the maritime powers were competing to maintain a presence across the globe on the surface waters and even under the sea.

All maritime countries have claimed some part of the seas beyond their shores as part of their sovereign territory, a zone of protection to be patrolled against smugglers, warships, and other intruders. At its origin, the basis of the claim of coastal states to a belt of the sea was the principle of protection; during the 17th and 18th centuries, another principle gradually evolved: that the extent of this belt should be measured by the power of the littoral sovereign to control the area.

In the 18th century, the so-called cannon-shot rule gained wide acceptance in Europe. Coastal states were to exercise dominion over their territorial seas as far as projectiles could be fired from cannon based on the shore. According to some scholars, in the 18th century the range of land-based cannons was approximately one marine league, or three nautical miles. It is believed that on the basis of this formula developed the traditional 3-mi (4.8-km) territorial sea limit.

By the late 1960s, a trend to a 12-mi (19.3-km) territorial sea had gradually emerged throughout the world, with a great majority of nations claiming sovereignty out to that seaward limit. However, the major maritime and naval powers clung to a 3-mi limit on territorial seas, primarily because a 12-mi limit would effectively close off and place under national sovereignty more than 100 straits used for international navigation. 

In 1973, an international conference aimed at reaching an agreement was convened in New York. Nine years later in 1982, it adopted a constitution for the seas: the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. During those nine years, representatives of more than 160 states sat down and discussed the issues and bargained and traded national rights and obligations in the course of the marathon negotiations that produced the convention.

Among the more important aspects of the convention are navigational rights, territorial sea limits, economic jurisdiction, legal status of resources on the seabed beyond the limits of national jurisdiction, passage of ships through narrow straits, conservation and management of living marine resources, protection of the marine environment, a marine research regime, and, a more unique feature, a binding procedure for settlement of disputes between states. In short, the convention is an unprecedented attempt by the international community to regulate all aspects of the resources of the sea and uses of the ocean and thus bring order to one of mankind’s very source of life.