In this volume, leading scholars and jurists in ocean law provide perspectives on the past record of legal change together with analyses of a wide range of institutional and legal innovation that are needed to meet current challenges.

Coastal and Ocean Management Law in a Nutshell surveys the continually evolving law of the coasts and oceans. The material is unique because it does not analyze the law of a discreet substantive field of law, but instead looks at the law in relation to a place - the coasts and oceans. These areas are viewed from common law and modern regulatory perspectives, from the federal and state levels, and from an international perspective. Starting with principles of the common law concerning the public trust doctrine and ownership of waters and coastal lands, the book moves to modern issues of beach access, coastal development and regulation of coastal resources, and the Coastal Zone Management Act. Offshore resource management issues, including outer continental shelf oil development and mining, fisheries, historic wrecks, navigation and pollution control, and protection of marine species are also surveyed. Finally, recent developments in the law of the sea and the United States' ocean law and policy responses are reviewed.

The most current text available on the international and U.S. law of the sea, this much-needed reference is built around the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and other relevant maritime materials. While it addresses all aspects of ocean usage, much emphasis has been placed on issues of contemporary importance such as international fisheries, maritime boundaries, and deep seabed mining. The first part introduces traditional zones of jurisdiction and doctrine such as inland waters, territorial seas, or high seas, as well as some new concepts related to navigation: the regimes of international straits and archipelagic waters and exclusive economic zones. The latter part analyzes functional issues such as fishing, oil and gas exploitation, mining, scientific research, and maritime pollution, referring on each subject to the U.S. law for comparison.

The last quarter century has witnessed vast changes in the governance of ocean space and resources. The keystone instrument in the new legal order is the 1982 UN Law of the Sea Convention, an agreement comprehensive in its scope that has provided the framework for further innovations in marine policy and ocean law. Accelerated change in the 1990s included the revision and the going-into-force of the 1982 Convention; and the conclusion of new international agreements on biodiversity, on the management of fishery stocks in international waters, and on marine navigation and safety. There has also been renewed impetus for regionalization of marine management and conservation efforts. These and other leading issues facing the global community today are the subjects of essays in this volume. The authors, acknowledged authorities in the field, offer fresh and searching reappraisals of how the 'common heritage' concepts in ocean law have been challenged by the contemporary crises in marine uses and ocean environment and resources. How national governments and international organizations have responded to urgent questions of ocean management is a major focus of these studies, and the book also provides important historical perspective on the doctrinal legacy of earlier ocean law. Emerging legal norms and the principles of law, new procedural mandates, the problems of implementation, and recent institutional developments in the international arena all receive attention in this timely and provocative work.

Science, Technology, and New Challenges to Ocean Law offers fresh perspectives on a set of vital issues in the field of ocean law and policy. Since the early period of the industrial revolution, successive waves of revolutionary scientific discoveries and technological innovations have intensified the global population’s exploitation of ocean and coastal resources. In this volume, several leading authorities in the field address major dimensions of the interface of science, technology and ocean law—both historically and in current-day perspective—and emergent challenges in legal ordering of ocean uses for sustainability and equitability. Among the topics that are analysed in these readable, accessible papers are ecosystem approaches to resource management, the historic interplay of science and military concerns, the place of science in dispute-settlement processes, the varied human uses of the seabed, the roles in ocean governance of indigenous peoples, legal issues in fisheries management and conservation, and special regional problems of the Arctic, the Bering Strait, the South China Sea, and the eastern Mediterranean. The urgent importance of the subjects addressed here, together with the variety of disciplinary approaches deployed by the authors, enhance the value of this book’s unique contribution to the literature of ocean studies.

This work reassesses the doctrine, and present-day status, of historic waters in the law of the sea, particularly in the light of the most recent decisions of the International Court of Justice which have referred to the topic and in the United States, such as Alaska v. US (2005), in which the author acted as expert witness for the US federal Government. The latter case forms a continuous theme throughout the book. Detailed and critical examination is made of the alleged rules in international customary law, including matters such as burden of proof.

The public trust doctrine. Role of the states. Managing coastal development. National environmental policy act ...

This compendium of documents brings together, for the first time in an affordable format, the essential documents needed to gain a thorough knowledge of the laws of the sea. There has been a long felt need for such a collection to provide students, scholars and practitioners with a working library of the key materials. This collection integrates documents of the International Maritime Organisation (which are not available anywhere on the web in consolidated form), of regional fisheries organizations, security related documents, treaties concerning resource exploitation, environmental protection measures and much more, into the framework created by the Law of the Sea Convention. The book is aimed at teachers and practitioners in the area and can be used as a class room companion for law of the sea courses.