Maritime Law

Maritime law (aka admiralty law or law of the sea) is a fundamental part of international law bound by the same rules and norms that govern international law more generally. In fact, the earliest law of the sea, the freedom-of-the-seas doctrine (that the sea should be free and open to all parties except for a narrow belt surrounding a nation's coastline), dates back to the origins of international law itself in the writings of Hugo Grotius in 1609. Over the years, customary law developed with some unique twists and turns, culminating in what can be said to be this area's "constitution-like" law in the form of the UN Convention on Law of the Sea (LOSC) -- passed in 1982 by 159 nations and implemented in 1994. Before one is able to fully understand LOSC, there are some general principles, customary rules, and normal exceptions which merit discussion first.

General Principles of Maritime Law

The most general principle is that of adjacency which can be stated thusly: areas which are closer to a state's coast entail higher levels of coastal state sovereignty or control; and areas which are further out from a coast entail lesser coastal state control. The next most general principle involves the concept of "baseline" which is the starting point for establishing all the different maritime zones (under LOSC, all maritime law is organized around different maritime zones). A baseline is what separates internal from external waters. It is a line measured by the low-water mark along a coast, which works fine for smooth coasts, but is problematic when a coast is fringed with islands, reefs, rocks or other features which cause low tide elevations. By law, a baseline should be straight and should not depart from the general direction or line of the land domain, unless a lighthouse is permanently installed on any low-tide elevations or a straight line is not possible due to long usage of some area for economic purposes (like fishing). Once a baseline is established, everything which takes place within internal waters is subject to full territorial sovereignty, with the exception that there is a right of innocent passage through waters that previously had not been considered internal waters. There is also a right of entry to any port when a vessel is in distress. Coastal states normally do not concern themselves with crimes committed aboard a foreign vessel, but the ship itself is subject to jurisdiction in rem (against the property) if any internal laws are broken. States may also regulate a ship's activities in territorial waters (where buoys usually mark navigation channels) and a contiguous zone (where boarding for search and seizure may occur).

PRINTED RESOURCES
Anand, R. (1983). Origin and development of the law of the sea. The Hague: Kluwer Law International.
Buergenthal, T. & Murphy, S. (2007). Public international law in a nutshell, 4e. NY: Thomson/West Group.
Churchill, R. & Lowe, A. (1999). The law of the sea. Manchester, UK: Manchester Univ. Press.
Freestone, D., Barnes, R. & Ong, D. (Eds.) (2006). The law of the sea: Progress and prospects. NY: Oxford Univ. Press.
Keyuan, Z. (2005). Law of the sea in East Asia. NY: Routledge.
O'Connell, D. (1982/1984). The international law of the sea: Vol I and II. NY: Oxford Univ. Press.

Last updated: July 08, 2008
Not an official webpage of APSU, copyright restrictions apply, see Megalinks in Criminal Justice
O'Connor, T. (Date of Last Update at bottom of page). In Part of web cited (Windows name for file at top of browser), MegaLinks in Criminal Justice. Retrieved from http://www.apsu.edu/oconnort/rest of URL accessed on today's date.

*THE PROBLEM OF UNDERSEA TRAFFICKING*
First discovered in 2006, about 75 semi-submersible subs are used by drug cartels to move cocaine. Built in jungles up on river systems (in Colombia, where 7 shipyards exist), each sub can go 3,500 miles and carry 10 tons of cocaine. (Spiegel)