THREE-MILE LIMIT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 95, 24 April 1939, Page 5

THREE-MILE LIMIT.

ITS OBSOLESCENCE. ; HOW IT WAS ESTABLISHED. U.S. STATE STRETCHES IT. WASHINGTON. Knotty international questions are involved in a bill recently passed by the Delaware Senate, which extended the State boundary 27 miles out into the Atlantic, far beyond the three milee customarily accepted as the limita of jurisdiction over surrounding seas. The Delaware bill, based on the effective range of modern heavy artillery, has received some unofficial support in Washington, but as it involves a major alteration in international law it is not likely to be put into effect nationally by summary individual action of the United States.

Delaware's action also involves a constitutional question, in that the bill asserts that the State "can define its limit on the sea"—a proposition which would make for much confusion if all the sea coast Statee of the Union were to adopt varying limits. It might aleo involve conflict with the Federal power of conducting foreign affairs, ehould a foreign ship be penalised for violation of a State statute beyond the three-mile limit.

Claims of the Past.

The question of jurisdiction over coastal. waters is ancient and difficult. It has the background of the sea power of Greece and Rome and was discussed in the Pandects of Justinian. Some nations long asserted sovereignty over vast expanses of open sea; > orw *y claimed much of the North Atlantic, Sweden and Denmark contested for tfte Baltic; Venice, the Adriatic; 1 and Snain in the sixteenth century, fcu-ht for the control of all the oceans -PortuJl decreeing death for anjna«Jfor who sailed to India without been *e fVom her king, and Spau. "J"*"*"** rule over the entire Pacific and the western Atlantic.

England asserted sovereignty over the "English Sea" (interpreted at various times as modestly ae the English Channel and a belt around the English coast or as grandly ae "that which flows between England and the opposite shores and ports") and compelled mariners of other nations to strike their topsails or dip their flags to every English man-of-war.

The extent to which these theories of national ownership of the open sea could be enforced depended on naval strength.. By mutual- consent, they gradually became somewhat less ambitioue, but there was no agreement ae to the precise limits of sovereignty. Some writers mentioned 100 miles, others 60 miles. A "day's sailing from the harbours" was proposed in the fourteenth century; this depended, of course, on - the wind and tide and the build of the vessel. The range of vision of normal eyes on a fair day was another suggestion, but it led to all eorts of quibbles. The "Gnnahot Rule." In 1703, a Dutch publicist Corneliu van Bynkershoek, first laid down the principle that a uniform rule for all seas and coasts be established on the basis of the range of a cannon shot With the ordnance of the time, this gave a maximum of V«s than a mile, but it uas logjral in that one of the principal reasons for asserting dominion over surrounding seas always has been for protection of the coast. Toward the close of the eighteenth century an Italian, Galiani. defined gunshot range l . ae three miles—an extreme figure, for a. f late as 1814 the maximum range wa» 1 not much more than two mile*. Bv 1789, the "gunshot rule" w« «£ 1 £ T£?~ or three geoe graphical miles, in instructions to our r ministers in Great Britain and France. 7 This definition was embodied in a treaty ; between the United States and Great ; Britain, signed in 1818—the first treaty to apply the three-mile limit as euch.

The three-mile limit gained increasing support in the following century, though it wa# by no means accepted by all States for all purposes. There was ateo a question as to whether the limit riHpnM follow all the bends of the coast]

—which would greatly limit control over bays whose mouths were more than iox miles wide—or whether it should Iμ drawn from headland to headland— which would give the littoral state juruk diction over wide areas of open tea.

Ho Unanimity. . . In a treatise on the extent of juris* diction in coastal waters printed in 1937, Captain Christopher B. V. Meyer, of tn* Royal Norwegian Xavy, writes Hut there are only two places where the three-mile limit is laid down by national legislation—lceland and the Faroe Islands. Only three State*, Captain Meyer said, follow the three-mile limit in practice for all sovereign purposes— the Netherlands, Belgium- and Get many. The application of the three-mile limit to fisheries , control is fairly widespread, but Sweden, Finland and Denmark hare a four-mile limit and exercise Custom* control still farther out. Russia ue» four miles in the Gulf of Finland and twelve miles a Ion? her northern *"•*£ Spain, Portugal, Yugoslavia, J t * , r* a ° some extent France, apply * "*

m, TbeTnited States, though **?% numerous occasions sought.* "^Snrf „*» of the «*£-*s£ 1S» tlretrf a* twelve miles. None of these limits-three, four, six or twelve miles-now have any real relation to the basic principle of the "srunshot rule" from whence they sprang. They are all arbitrary, and are open to serious disadvantages; in case of war, for example, if two battleships engaged in combat just outside the territorial limits of a neutral State, the danger of damage to the neutrals from wild shells would be very grave.