ARGUMENT OF CHARLES B. WARREN. 1213 



De Cussy, "Phases et Causes celebres du Droit Maritime," pub- 

 lished in 1856, vol. I, sees. 40 and 41, pp. 96 and 97 ; United States 

 extract, pp. 3 and 4: 



" Can we not say with certainty : 



" First, that the sovereignty over the territorial sea reaches as far 

 as the range of cannon-shot from the shore, .... 



" Second, this sovereignty extends over maritime regions, such as 

 roadsteads, bays, gulfs, and straits, whose entrance and exit may be 

 defended by cannon " 



" Section 41, page 97. All gulfs and straits cannot belong through- 

 out their entire extent to the territorial sea of the state whose coasts 

 they wash. The sovereignty of the state is limited over gulfs and 

 straits of wid,e extent to the distance indicated in the foregoing para- 

 graph ; beyond this, gulfs and straits of this category are assimilated 

 to the sea and their use is free to all nations." 



Sir Travers Twiss, " Law of Nations," citing from edition of 1884, 

 pp. 292 to 295 ; United States extract, pp. 1, 2, 3, and 4 : 



" Upon this princpile a Neutral Nation is held to be entitled 

 to preclude Belligerent Powers from carrying on mutual hostili- 

 ties upon the open sea within a certain distance of its coast. 

 731 That distance, as between Nation and Nation, is held to extend 

 as far as the safety of a Nation renders it necessary, and its 

 power is adequate to assert it; and as that distance cannot, with con- 

 venience to other Nations, be a variable distance, depending on the 

 presence or absence of an armed fleet, it is by practice since the intro- 

 duction of firearms identified with that distance, over which a Nation 

 can command obedience to its Empire by the fire of its cannon (14). 

 That distance, by consent, is now taken to be a Maritime League sea- 

 wards along all the coasts of a Nation. Beyond the distance of a 

 sea -league from its coasts, the Territorial Laws of a Nation are, 

 strictly speaking, not operative. It may happen that a Nation 

 chooses to extend its own Laws over its National vessels wherever 

 they may be navigated on the High Seas, but however general and 

 comprehensive the phrases used in the Municipal Law may be, they 

 must be always restricted in their construction to the citizens of the 

 State, to which the vessel belongs (15), and to the mutual relations 

 between such citizens, and cannot be extended to the vessels of other 

 Nations, or to the persons on board of them. 



"Section 180. Writers on Public (16) Law have spoken of the 

 open sea (mare vastum) within the distance of a Maritime League 

 along the coasts of a Nation as its Maritime Tewitory ( See-Gebiet) . 

 If the Law of Nations be held to be a portion of the Law of each 

 Nation in such matters as are within its scope, then there may be no 

 valid objection to the use of the phrase Maritime Territory in the 

 sense of Territory subject to the Law of the Sea, but in as much as 

 the term territory in its proper sense is used to denote a district 

 within which a Nation has an absolute and exclusive right to set Law, 

 some risk of confusion may ensue if we speak of any part of the open 

 Sea over which a Nation has only a concurrent right to set Law, as 

 its .Maritime Territory. It would tend to greater clearness, if Jurists 

 were to confine the use of the term Maritime Territory to the actual 

 coasts of a Nation, or to those portions of sea intra fauces terrce over 



