TERRITORIAL WATERS

The part of the ocean adjacent to the coast of a state that is considered to be part of the territory of that state and subject to its sovereignty.

In international law the term territorial waters refers to that part of the ocean immediately adjacent to the shores of a state and subject to its territorial jurisdiction. The state possesses both the jurisdictional right to regulate, police, and adjudicate the territorial waters and the proprietary right to control and exploit natural resources in those waters and exclude others from them. Territorial waters differ from the high seas, which are common to all nations and are governed by the principle of freedom of the seas. The high seas are not subject to appropriation by persons or states but are available to everyone for navigation, exploitation of resources, and other lawful uses. The legal status of territorial waters also extends to the seabed and subsoil under them and to the airspace above them.

From the eighteenth to the middle of the twentieth century, international law set the width of territorial waters at one league (three nautical miles), although the practice was never wholly uniform. The United States established a three-mile territorial limit in 1793. International law also established the principle that foreign ships are entitled to innocent passage through territorial waters.

By the 1970s, however, more than forty countries had asserted a twelve-mile limit for their territorial waters. In 1988 President ronald reagan issued Executive Proclamation 5928, which officially increased the outer limit of U.S. territorial waters from three to twelve miles (54 Fed. Reg. 777). This limit also applies to Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands. The Reagan administration claimed the extension of the limit was primarily motivated by national security concerns, specifically to hinder the operations of spy vessels from the Soviet Union that plied the U.S. coastline. Another reason for the extension was the recognition that most countries had moved to a twelve-mile limit. In 1982, at the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, 130 member countries ratified the Convention on the law of the sea, which included a recognition of the twelve-mile limit as a provision of customary international law. Although the United States voted against the convention, 104 countries had officially claimed a twelve-mile territorial sea by 1988.

cross-references

Law of the Sea; Navigable Waters.

territorial waters, that area of sea adjacent to a nation's coasts which is under the full control of that nation. It was a contentious issue for centuries, and books like Mare Clausum were written about it. Eventually a suggestion put forward by the Dutch jurist Cornelis van Bynkershoek (1673–1743), in his book De Dominio Maris (On the Dominion of the Sea), published in 1703, was adopted. He proposed that a nation should exercise dominion over the adjacent seas only to the extent that it could defend them from the shore. This was taken as the existing range of a cannon, and agreed to be 3 miles (5 km). However, it took until 1822 for this to be formally agreed when France, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Britain signed the North Sea Fisheries Convention at The Hague. It was also agreed that waters outside this limit should be open to all ships without hindrance.

After the Second World War (1939–45) this limit was challenged by a number of maritime nations. In 1945 the US President, Harry Truman, stated that his country had the right to the offshore oil and gas resources on its continental shelf, an entirely new concept. A number of countries followed suit and others began to claim extended limits, too, mainly to preserve to themselves their inshore fisheries. When Iceland extended its territorial limits to 19 kilometres (12 mls.) in 1958 it sparked with Britain the first of three confrontations, known as the ‘cod wars’, before most nations eventually accepted this distance as marking territorial waters. However, as fish stocks dwindled, the pressure was on to extend the limits still further, and in February 1976, following Iceland's decision to extend its limits to 320 kilometres (200 mls.), the European Economic Community established a similar European zone, and soon afterwards most maritime nations followed suit. In 1994 the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) introduced the Exclusive Economic Zone and codified territorial waters as 12 nautical miles, though in 1999 US agencies were ordered to enforce US law up to double that distance. UNCLOS also confirmed the right of a ship on innocent passage to pass through the territorial waters of another nation.

territorial waters all waters within the jurisdiction, recognized in international law , of a country. Certain waters by their situation are controlled by one nation; these include wholly enclosed inland seas, lakes, and rivers. Control of boundary lakes and rivers extends to the middle of the navigable channel, but agreements to share the use of such waters and of waters that flow through several countries (e.g., the Rhine, the Danube) are common. When waters are almost completely bordered by one country, but lie along an international navigation route (e.g., the Bosporus), treaties often make them available to all ships.

Since the 18th cent. coastal states have been held to have jurisdiction over unenclosed waters for 3 nautical mi (3.45 mi/5.55 km) from the low water line, a measure originally derived from the distance of a cannon shot. In the case of a bay up to 24 mi (39 km) wide, a line drawn from one enclosing point to the other marked the outer limit of territorial jurisdiction. A broader zone of jurisdiction to combat smuggling has long been claimed by various states, as by the United States during prohibition .

Merchant ships of all flags have the right of "innocent passage" in a nation's territorial waters; the rights of nonbelligerent foreign warships in this zone, and the extent of the jurisdiction of the coastal nation's courts over ships passing through and incidents in the zone, have long been matters of debate. Fishing and mineral extraction within the zone are entirely within the control of the coastal nation. In the 20th cent., coastal nations progressively widened their claims over offshore waters, especially in the face of competition from foreign fishing fleets and in anticipation of rich oil, gas, and mineral finds on the continental shelf. The UN-sponsored Law of the Sea Treaty, which went into effect in 1994, codified territorial waters of 12 nautical mi (13.8 mi/22.2 km) and an exclusive economic zone of 200 nautical mi (230 mi/370 km). In 1999, U.S. agencies were empowered by presidential proclamation to enforce American law up to 24 miles (39 km) offshore, doubling the previous limit.

ter·ri·to·ri·al wa·ters • pl. n. the waters under the jurisdiction of a state, esp. the part of the sea within a stated distance of the shore (traditionally three miles from low-water mark).

territorial waters see waters, territorial .