The Three-Mile Limit

Abstract

After any close inquiry into the present authority of the rule of the threemile limitof territorial waters, the candid observer will probabjy come to the conclusion that therule, while not infrequently attacked in theory, is supreme in practice. Diplomatists seldom or never question it; professors occasionally do. In the actual conduct of affairs,it is seldom challenged, and never successfully so. It must be premised that in what follows there is left out of account altogether the question of bays and gulfs. This is a different and more difficult question which can best be treated separately.

Sunken Efforts? Legal Hurdles to Stemming Maritime CBRNE Proliferation

“…This idea became common practice and was known as the "cannon shot rule" and was regarded as the internationally accepted measure of the width of the territorial sea. [15] Over the next few hundred years, whenever states have sought to extend their jurisdiction to encompass larger tracts of maritime space, other states have displayed an attitude of resistance in accordance with their preference for maintaining the mare liberum principle. Any new claims of exclusivity over ocean space or resources have most commonly been viewed as a curtailment from the pre-existing freedoms of the open seas (also known as "the high seas" or "international waters") and have been mostly quashed.…”

Custom, Power and the Power of Rules. ByMichael Byers. New York:Melbourne: Cambridge University Press,1999. Pp. xxii, 246Index. $54.95, cloth; $19.95, paper

“…Few if any countries have ever formally contradicted it during that period, and none has ever successfully enforced a different rule on unwilling contemporaries. 229 Many other scholars, and groups of scholars. expressed similar views during the inter-war period.…”