ABSTRACT
There are few concepts more problematic in international law than that of the “free sea.”1 In 1608, Hugo Grotius (1916) coined the principle of mare liberum to justify the United Provinces’ (The Netherlands’) right to seize a Portuguese ship in Southeast Asia. In a later era, the United Kingdom used the principle to justify the interdiction of ships engaged in the slave trade. And today, it is being used to discipline Somali maritime robbers, enforcing an order that state authorities are not willing or able to exercise on land. Clearly, this is a very specific kind of “freedom” that is being implemented in the ocean, and one that is not so “free” for those caught on the wrong side of its selfappointed guardians.
