Freedom of navigation

In both Roman law and Islamic law, notions of a commonality of the seas were firmly established. However, in practice, Romans, Europeans, and Muslim states did claim jurisdiction over the sea. Other notable supporters of this idea included John Burroughs and William Welwod. In the larger geopolitical context, mare clausum was backed by the major naval and colonial powers of the day, including Spain and Portugal. As these powers extended their reach to the New World and across Africa and Asia, they wished to consolidate control over their new empires and access to trade and resources there by denying other countries access to the sea routes leading to these areas. By quite literally closing off access to the seas using their naval muscle, these states would profit handsomely from the growing maritime trade routes and foreign colonies. Meanwhile, the Dutch Republic, the dominant European trade carrier, championed a different rule, known as mare liberum (free seas), summarized as "a free ship [makes] free goods." This meant that even enemy goods, always excepting contraband, were inviolate in neutral bottoms (i.e. hulls), making neutral ships off-limits for attack on the high seas. For the Dutch Republic, this was essential in order to secure the safety and viability of their extensive trade network. This concept was coined by Hugo Grotius, a Dutch jurist and a founding father of international law. Grotius advocated for a shift in maritime norms that would make the high seas free for transport and shipping, regardless of the country of origin of the ship. This would represent not only a change in law, but also a fundamental shift in the perception of the maritime realm as something not to be owned, as land is, but rather as a shared resource. Behind this concept is a liberal view of sovereign equality, in which all states have equal access to the high seas, and a view of an interdependent world connected by the sea. As the dominant naval powers of Spain and Portugal weakened, and international trade increased, Grotius’ mare liberum concept would come to be the accepted custom governing sovereignty at sea. From concept to custom to law Freedom of navigation came to be embodied in bilateral treaties to become part of what would today be called international law. The earliest example of such a treaty is one concluded between King Henry IV of France and the Ottoman Porte in 1609, followed in 1612 by one between the Porte and the Dutch Republic. Once the Eighty Years' War between Spain and the Dutch Republic had ended during which Spain defended their claim of sovereignty over the oceans against the Dutch claim of "freedom of the high seas," as developed in Hugo Grotius' Mare Liberum, the two concluded a treaty of commerce in which "free ship, free goods" was enshrined. The Dutch Republic subsequently concluded bilateral treaties with most other European countries, containing the "free ship, free goods" principle, sometimes resorting to the use of force to obtain that concession, as against England in the Treaty of Breda (1667) and again in the Treaty of Westminster (1674). England, however, also held fast to the consolato rule in relations with other countries, as did France, until in 1744 it relented and extended the privilege to the neutral Dutch. The Dutch eventually established a web of bilateral treaties that extended the privilege of "freedom of navigation" to their ships through much of Europe. During the many 18th-century European wars they remained neutral, serving all belligerents with their shipping services. Great Britain, in particular, chafed under the arrangement, as it was the dominant naval power in the 18th century, and the Dutch privilege undermined the effectiveness of its naval blockades. Matters came to a head during the American Revolutionary War, when the Dutch, shielded by the 1674 Anglo-Dutch treaty, supplied both the Americans and the French. The British made extensive use of their "right of search" of Dutch ships, which led to the affair of Fielding and Bylandt in which a Royal Navy squadron detained a Dutch merchant convoy. Soon afterward, the North ministry abrogated the 1674 treaty, which might have meant the end of the "free ship, free goods" doctrine, but Empress Catherine II of Russia had taken up the torch around the same time. In March 1780, she published a manifesto in which (among other things) she claimed the "free ship, free goods" principle, as a fundamental right of neutral states. To defend that principle, she formed the First League of Armed Neutrality to which the Dutch adhered at the end of the year (which sparked the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War). The principles from her manifesto were soon adhered to by the members of the League and by France, Spain and the new American Republic also (even if, as belligerents, they could not become members of the League). Nevertheless, as a principle of international law (apart from treaty law) "free ship, free goods" was soon again overturned by the practice of both sides in the French Revolutionary Wars of the turn of the 19th century. For instance, in the jurisprudence of the American courts of the early 19th-century, the consolato principle was universally applied in cases not covered by treaties. On the other hand, the US government made it a steadfast practice to enshrine the "free ship, free goods" principle in the treaties of amity and commerce it concluded with other countries (starting with the 1778 one with France and the 1782 one with the Dutch Republic). In other words, the American view (following the British practice) was that at that time consolato was customary international law, which, however, could be superseded by treaty law on a bilateral basis. The US, however, earnestly strove for the substitution of consolato by "free ship" in customary law also. That state of affairs came about when Britain finally gave up its resistance to the principles, first formulated by Empress Catherine in 1780, and acquiesced in the 1856 Paris Declaration Respecting Maritime Law, which enshrined "free ship makes free goods" and rejecting "enemy ship makes enemy goods." The Declaration was signed by the major powers (except the US) and it was soon adhered to by most other powers. The new rule (a combination of the "best" parts of Consolato and "free ship") became that a "neutral flag covers enemy's goods (except contraband); neutral goods are not liable to seizure under the enemy's flag." While the concept as a whole became accepted international custom and law, the practice and implementation of freedom of navigation would during these years be developed through local jurisprudence and political decision-making. While local jurisprudence differed, usually a consensus view emerged over time. A key example is the issue of territorial waters. While there was agreement that a certain expanse of the seas from a state's shorelines would be under stricter state control than the high seas, the exact distance this control would extend from the shoreline was debated. However, over time through local governance and jurisprudence a general agreement emerged that territorial waters would extend three leagues or three miles from the shoreline. This norm- and custom-formation continued for centuries within the frame of mare liberum. The UNCLOS and the modern understanding of freedom of navigation in international law This culminated in 1982, when freedom of navigation became part of the broader body of laws of the sea currently embodied in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Article 87 of this convention explicitly codifies this concept, stating “The high seas are open to all States, whether coastal or land-locked” and lists “freedom of navigation” as the first of several rights for all states on the high seas. The drafting of UNCLOS clearly was in line with Grotius’ ideas of sovereign equality and international interdependence. All states were given a voice in the drafting of the convention, and the convention only came into effect with the consent and ratification of the party states. Implementation of UNCLOS connects the party states together across the shared space of the high seas. Freedom of navigation as formulated in the UNCLOS, was a trade-off between the developed and the developing world. Where the developed world had an interest in maximizing their freedom to sail and explore the seas, the developing world wanted to protect their offshore resources and their independence. In other words, it was a conflict between understanding the seas through the principle of mare liberum that asserts the oceans to be open to all nations or mare clausum that advocates that the seas should be under the sovereignty of a state. The UNCLOS upheld freedom of navigation on the high seas but also invented different zones of sovereignty that limited the rules of foreign ships in these waters with concepts like internal waters and exclusive economic zones (EEZ). Transit passage refers to passage through straits used for international navigation between one part of the high seas or an EEZ and another with more relaxed criteria for passage. The passage must be continuous and expeditious transit of the strait. With archipelagic sea lanes passage archipelagic states may provide sea-lanes and air-routes passage though their waters where ships can enjoy freedom of navigation. American adherence to freedom of navigation American advocacy for freedom of navigation extends as far back as the United States' 1778 treaty with France, enshrining freedom of navigation as a legal custom on a bilateral level. In the 20th century, Woodrow Wilson advocated for freedom of navigation, making it Point 2 of his Fourteen Points (see Freedom of the seas). The US has not ratified the 1982 UNCLOS treaty, but it is a party to the preceding 1958 Convention on the High Seas. Despite its failure to formally ratify UNCLOS, the US now considers UNCLOS to be part of customary international law, and has committed to adhering to and enforcing the law. Current developments Support for freedom of navigation has been endorsed by 51 nations in relation to restrictions on shipping operations in the Strait of Hormuz. == Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPs) ==