664 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEA 



Arbitration on the rights of seal-fishing in the Behring Sea, 

 though the tribunal did not affirm, and could not affirm, that 

 it found the three-mile limit to be, as a matter of fact, univer- 

 sally accepted. 1 But though it is the ordinary limit, it is not 

 the only one enforced, and it is erroneous to declare, as some of 

 the less instructed writers on international law have stated, 

 that territorial jurisdiction cannot be carried further. 2 



In point of fact, no fewer than four of the maritime states 

 of Europe reject the three-mile limit, while a fifth has in part 

 deviated from it. Norway, Sweden, Spain, and Portugal, all 

 claim to enforce a wider boundary, and Denmark has adopted 

 the old Scandinavian limit in her recent treaty with Sweden 

 (see p. 655). Thus, along nearly 4000 miles of the coasts of 

 Europe, or for about one-third of their whole extent, the three- 

 mile limit is not accepted by the bordering state. The right 

 claimed by these countries to a wider extent of territorial sea 

 has been embodied in treaties between some of them, and has 

 been successfully maintained in specific instances against the 

 opposition of other Powers. It is to be noted, moreover, as is 

 shown latex*, that their claims to the wider space have been 

 quite lately fully justified and homologated by the most 

 authoritative exponents of international law, the French 

 Institute and the British Association on the Law of Nations, 

 as well as by various international congresses of fishery experts 

 dealing with the subject from a fishery point of view. 



We have already stated that Spain in the eighteenth century 

 declared that her territorial sea extended to a distance of six 

 miles from the coast (see p. 569). At that time such a limit 

 must have been regarded as moderate, but during last century, 

 after the principle of cannon range had been commonly trans- 

 lated into one marine league, the right to a zone of double that 

 extent was called in question both by the United States and 

 Great Britain. During the civil war in America the question 



1 Award of the Tribunal of Arbitration, p. 23, " outside the ordinary three-mile 

 limit." The President, Baron de Courcel, has since explained that the tribunal 

 " s'est borne" & constater que les parties e'taient d'accord pour admettre que Fetendue 

 de trois milles a partir de la cote comme formant dans 1'espece qui lui e"tait soumise. 

 la limite ordinaire des eaux territoriales. " M. de Courcel to M. Auber, App. Ann. 

 de I'lnstitut de Droit Internal, for 1894, p. 282. Vide Hall, A Treatise on Inter- 

 national Law, 4th ed., p. 161. 



2 For example, Leoni Levi, " No territorial sovereignty exists or can be claimed 

 beyond the three miles zone." Internat. Law, 112. 



