The Poseidon Project

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Bosco
Keyword(s):  
South China Sea ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
South China ◽  
The South China Sea ◽  
Law Of The Sea ◽  
Environmental Concerns ◽  
The World ◽  
Maritime Disputes ◽  
National Governments

For several centuries, freedom of the seas was the dominant framework for managing the oceans and their use. That doctrine recognized the ocean as a space open to all, which people from all nations could use and exploit. In recent decades, however, that doctrine has eroded in multiple ways and for a variety of reasons. During the world wars of the 20th century, combatants imposed unprecedented restrictions on maritime commerce, leaving international rules in tatters. National governments have steadily expanded their reach into the oceans. More recently, environmental concerns have led to new international restrictions on high seas pollution and fishing. Today’s most dangerous maritime disputes—including China’s push for control of the South China Sea—are occurring against the backdrop of major changes in the way the world treats the oceans. Tracing the roots of the law of the sea and the background to current maritime disputes, this book chronicles how national governments interact with activists, merchants, and fragile international organizations in the struggle to build effective ocean rules.

scholarly journals Treaty of Tordesillas Syndrome: Sovereignty ad Absurdum and the South China Sea Arbitration

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher R Rossi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South China Sea ◽  
International Law ◽  
South China ◽  
The South China Sea ◽  
Law Of The Sea ◽  
The South ◽  
Global Commons ◽  
China Sea ◽  
The World

Cornell International Law Journal: Vol. 50 : No. 2 , Article 3. The South China Sea is the fifth largest body of water in the world. It accounts for five trillion dollars in annual commercial activity involving a third of maritime traffic worldwide. China claims wide-ranging sovereign rights over upwards of ninety percent of this Sea via a controversial U-shaped line. Its claim upsets regional stability and portends a coming conflict with the United States, the world's supreme maritime power, over the application of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). China claims its sovereign authority predates UNCLOS by millennia; critics date China's claim to 1947. Already described as the most important ruling in the modem history of the international law of the sea, a Tribunal of the Permanent Court of Arbitration handed down a sweeping rebuke of China's contentions in the July 2016 Award in the South China Sea Arbitration (Philippines v. China), setting up a confrontation between emergent China and established United States. This Article discusses that Award in light of the fundamental tension within the liberal model of freedom of the seas-the unreconciled tension involving ownership interests over resources of the sea (dominium) and the decision-making power to rule over the seas (imperium). While scholarly attention dissects the Tribunal's discussion of historical and factual circumstances (effectivites) that aggregate against China's sovereignty claims, this Article notes deeper problems, too: Ambiguities in UNCLOS have allowed powerful states to historically territorialize wide swaths of the dwindling global commons, all within the compliant liberal framework. Such claims are reminiscent of the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), where Spain and Portugal divided up ownership of the world. The territorializing instinct of the Treaty of Tordesillas serves as a syndromic indicator of a recurring problem involving the sea and its increasingly scarce resources. It sets up a major challenge for international law as between superpower interests in the South China Sea, and, more generally, over disputes involving the global commons and spatial regimes on the emerging frontier of technological capability.

scholarly journals Defining eez Claims from Islands: A Potential South China Sea Change

2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C. Beckman ◽  
Clive H. Schofield
Keyword(s):  
South China Sea ◽  
South China ◽  
The South China Sea ◽  
The South ◽  
Joint Development ◽  
China Sea ◽  
Maritime Boundary ◽  
The Face ◽  
Maritime Disputes ◽  
United Nations Convention

In the face of seemingly intractable territorial and maritime disputes in the South China Sea, the article examines how the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (losc), sets out what maritime claims States can make in the South China Sea and how it establishes a framework that will enable States to either negotiate maritime boundary agreements or negotiate joint development arrangements (jdas) in areas of overlapping maritime claims. It provides an avenue whereby the maritime claims of the claimants can be brought into line with international law, potentially allowing for meaningful discussions on cooperation and maritime joint development based on areas of overlapping maritime claims defined on the basis of the losc.

The South China Sea

Asian Survey ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 455-477 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stein Tønnesson
Keyword(s):  
South China Sea ◽  
International Law ◽  
South China ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
The South China Sea ◽  
Law Of The Sea ◽  
The South ◽  
Government Behavior ◽  
China Sea ◽  
The Law

The article looks at three ways in which international law has affected government behavior in the South China Sea. It has exacerbated disputes. It has probably curtailed the use of force. And it has made it difficult to imagine solutions that violate the law of the sea.

scholarly journals Jurisdiction of the Arbitral Tribunalin Philippines V.China Under UNCLOS and in the absence of China

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 266-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Parlett
Keyword(s):  
South China Sea ◽  
United Nations ◽  
South China ◽  
The South China Sea ◽  
Law Of The Sea ◽  
The South ◽  
China Sea ◽  
United Nations Convention ◽  
International Tribunals ◽  
The Law

It is not uncommon for decisions of international tribunals to be reported in the pages of the Washington Post or feature on the BBC News website. It is rather less common for awards to feature on the giant screens of New York’s Times Square. But less than two weeks after the Arbitral Tribuna lunder Annex VII to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea issued its Awardin Philippines v.China, a three-minute video featuring China’s position was broadcast repeatedly on the screen better known forbroadcasting New Year’s Eve festivities than argumentation on the competence of international tribunals. The video asserted that China’s “indisputable sovereignty over [the South China Sea islands] has sufficient historic and legal basis” and that “the Arbitral Tribunalvainly attempted to deny China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea.” It further stated that “China did not participate in the illegal South China Sea arbitration, nor accepts the Awardso as to defend the solemnity of international law.” This latter statement goes to the very heart of the Arbitral Tribunal’s jurisdiction under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (the Convention) and its competence to decide the case despite China’s nonparticipation in the proceedings.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 242-248
Author(s):  
David Bosco
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South China Sea ◽  
South China ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fundamental Change ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Regional Organizations ◽  
The World ◽  
Complex Hybrid ◽  
National Governments

The disagreement between China and the United States over maritime rights in the South China Sea has become the leading maritime point of friction. But that dispute is just one part of more fundamental change at work in how the world governs the oceans, one that has moved away from the idea of freedom of the seas. A central question is whether the UN Convention’s compromise on the oceans can endure. The Convention increased national sovereignty over parts of the oceans but also created mechanisms of international control. What emerged from that compromise is a complex, hybrid system of governance that relies on national governments but also a variety of international and regional organizations and international courts. Part of that compromise is a narrower version of freedom of the seas, but pressure from multiple directions is rendering even a limited version of that long-standing doctrine increasingly fragile.

A new record of the copepod Xanthocalanus agilis Giesbrecht, 1893 (Calanoida, Phaennidae) from the South China Sea

Crustaceana ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 92 (7) ◽  
pp. 789-797
Author(s):  
Y. Z. Feng ◽  
Z. S. Liu
Keyword(s):  
South China Sea ◽  
South China ◽  
World Ocean ◽  
Morphological Characteristics ◽  
Distal Segment ◽  
The South China Sea ◽  
The South ◽  
China Sea ◽  
Deep Waters ◽  
The World

Abstract The genus Xanthocalanus inhabits the intermediate and deep waters of the world ocean. The present study records and describes the first female individual of Xanthocalanus agilis Giesbrecht, 1893, collected in the South China Sea (13°0.21′N 113°0.21′E) at depths of 500-800 m. This species was identified by the following morphological characteristics: (i) rostrum with 2 slender filaments; (ii) posterolateral corners of fifth thoracic somite protuberant and triangular, reaching the posterior margin of genital somite; (iii) first segment of fifth pereiopod (P5) with a list of inner marginal spinules, distal segment short with 3 robust terminal spines. This finding expands the known global and vertical distribution of X. agilis.

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