ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the form of State ocean jurisdiction. It highlights the fact that the involvement of States in human activities takes a wide variety of forms. Identifying those forms and ascertaining the degree of their impact on the persons concerned is essential if one is to accurately map the gradated pattern along the lines of which international law attributes jurisdiction to States in ocean matters. That pattern takes into account that State organs exercise their authority on the basis of their respective domestic law and that, in most cases, the latter distinguishes between “legislative jurisdiction”, “executive jurisdiction” and “adjudicative jurisdiction”. The chapter also tries to unravel the complex relationship between the three jurisdictions, the three categories of organs called upon to exercise them and the three categories of acts performed to that end. In the process, it is stressed that the determinant factor is not the nature of the organ concerned, but the nature of the act performed.
