ABSTRACT
At first glance, the notion of owning the sea seems silly. How could any nation or group of nations own that vast expanse? Indeed, who would want to do so? Rephrase the question, however, replacing ownership with jurisdiction, asking, 'Who has jurisdiction over the sea and over who sails upon it, and who can exploit its resources?' and the question makes more sense. While again at first glance, the question might still seem silly, in fact, there are several ways to claim jurisdiction over at least part of the sea and a variety of reasons for doing so. After all, nations bordering the sea have always claimed some jurisdiction over the waters adjacent to them. Indeed, any society dependent on sea-borne trade would assert some jurisdiction over the sea if only to protect the sea-lanes that supplied it from pirates. When, for example, the Romans scoured the Mediterranean to eliminate piracy and stationed fleets there to police the sea, they were in effect claiming jurisdiction over the mare nostrum.1 During the Middle Ages, several governments claimed possession of parts of the sea. These precedents for possession of the sea in turn provided much of the basis for the well-known 17th-century debate about whether the sea, especially the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, was open to all who wished to sail there, mare liberum, or closed, mare clausum, that is, whether navigation and trade could be limited to a specific country or countries.
