The Seasteading Institute

Building on the concepts set out in Dario Mutabdzija and Max Borders’ first legal strategy paper, the authors offer this second paper, "Building the Platform: Challenges, Solutions, and Decisions in Seasteading Law" as a more practical guide to seasteading legal issues.

I am very excited to share The Seasteading Institute’s first legal research paper, Charting the Course: Toward a Seasteading Legal Strategy (one of a two paper series). The primary objective of these legal papers is to assist with the formation of a legal strategy that will be useful to seasteaders around the world. What does this mean from a practical standpoint?

The Seasteading Institute is excited to welcome Dario Mutabdzija as our new Director of Legal Strategy! Dario will lead our efforts to navigate the highly unique and challenging legal issues pertaining to seasteading, including maritime law, legal restrictions on seastead citizens, long-term sovereignty issues, and more. Expect to see a seasteading legal overview whitepaper from Dario in early 2011, similar to our 2010 engineering overview.

Late in 2009, Francesca Galea wrote us to declare the completion of her doctoral thesis entitled Artificial Islands in the Law of the Sea. With her blessing, we posted the PDF of her significant and clarifying inquiries on our Research page, but it is more appropriate that we give her research the highlight it deserves. From the paper:

[Regimes for Managing Maritime Space, 1 April, Track 2 Session 1](http://www.dur.ac.uk/ibru/conferences/sos/programme/1_april/track2_session1/)

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](http://www.dur.ac.uk/ibru/) (IBRU) is hosting their 20th anniversary conference on The [State of Sovereignty](http://www.dur.ac.uk/ibru/conferences/sos/). I will be blogging the material I find interesting, here is what I have for you from [the plenary program](http://www.dur.ac.uk/ibru/conferences/sos/programme/1_april/opening_plenary/).

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).