The law at sea - legal notes

Tuesday, 19 November 2019

Worse Things Happen at Sea

Law in Action

Law of the Sea:

- Law of the sea covers many areas: inter alia, jurisdiction, criminal law (crime committed on the
sea) governing the conduct and welfare of those on it (and above and below it), resource
management, environmental protection

- Inter alia - amongst other things

The Actual Law of the Sea - Overview:

- Mixture of treaties & customary international law
- Geneva Conventions:
- Convention on the High Seas (1958)
- Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone (1958)
- Convention in the Continental Shelf (1958)
- Convention on Fishing and Conservative of the Living Resources of the High Seas
(1958)

- United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982)

Evolution of the Law of the Sea:

- Global seas essential to human trade and prosperity since Antiquity
- Ownership?:
- Grotius, Mare Liberum (1609) [‘The Freedom of the Seas’]
- Growth of maritime trading empires & crystallisation of ‘freedom of the high seas’.
- Fundamental problem: balancing freedom of the high seas with territorial State sovereignty
- The ‘three mile limit’

Evolution of the Law of the Sea - Codi cation

- Late 19th century onwards
- League of Nations Codi cation Conference 1930
- 1945 - President Truman’s Continental Shelf Proclamation
- UNCLOS I (1956 - 58) - Geneva Conventions:
- Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone (TSC)


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