Regimes for Managing Maritime Space, 1 April, Track 2 Session 1

Maritime Policing: A Sea of Change? From the Exercise of Sovereignty over Maritime Space towards the Enforcement of the Global Oceans Legal Framework, Ms Patricia Jimenez Kwast, University of Oxford, UK

Enforcement/Policing of the Law of the Sea, not by ship owners, ports, etc. Broad topic, global philosophical aspects.

Policing Powers at Sea - Background & Legal Framework

Has a picture of a pirate flag!

I am currently at the University of Durham, where the International Borders Research Unit (IBRU) is hosting their 20th anniversary conference on The State of Sovereignty. I will be blogging the material I find interesting, here is what I have for you from the plenary program.

In case you wonder - is this flag of convenience thing real? Will investors really invest in a company in some obscure foreign jurisdiction? This is from the risks section of a 2001 bond offering by Royal Caribbean (which I think was about $1B or so):

ENFORCEABILITY OF CIVIL LIABILITIES

We are a Liberian corporation and our selling shareholders are foreign corporations or partnerships.

In February 2009, legal research volunteer Jorge & I had lunch with a noted international expert on the Law of the Sea, who we'll call X. We mainly discussed near-shore medical tourism as the initial business model. Here are my notes from the meeting:

There is a tension between credibility and regulation of flagging states. The ones which will monitor you the least also have the least credibility in the world of international law. Patri & Jorge believe we should follow a laddered approach. Start with whoever will take us - Tuvalu, Marshall Islands, Liberia, Panama. See how it goes.

One of our favored business models has been the CoastStead - a business park operating 12nm offshore, just outside territorial waters. Being able to draw from the economy of a first-world country makes it much easier to make money and finance a seastead.

However, our recent legal research has determined that this model may not work with existing international law. While a ship is under the flag jurisdiction beyond 12nm, artificial installations are regulated by the coastal state throughout the EEZ (200nm or more).