RIGHTS OF PASSAGE
The Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius is most often cited for his contributions to the development of international laws of war. Before he published his magnum opus, On the Law of War and Peace, in 1625, however, he wrote a smaller work titled Mare Liberum (The Free Sea). It was not much more than a chapter excerpted from his study of the 17th-century practice of prize taking in naval conflict, but the influence of Grotius’s short essay was to survive far beyond his lifetime. It was, as the U.S. Naval War College describes it, nothing less than “the first formal statement of freedom of the seas as a general principle of international law.”
It was a simple enough proposition for the world’s seagoing nations to agree, at least in theory, that unimpeded navigation of the high seas was to the benefit of all concerned. In practice, however, the question of where a nation’s territorial waters and maritime sovereignty end and the high seas begin was a contentious point that remains hotly disputed today.
The influence of Grotius’s short essay was to survive far beyond his lifetime.
An early attempt at resolving the question was advanced by another Dutch jurist, Cornelius van Bynkershoek, who postulated
