Question

To every State whose land territory is at any place washed by the sea, international law attaches a corresponding portion of maritime territory... International law does not say to a State: “You are entitled to claim territorial waters if you want them”. No maritime State can refuse them. International law imposes upon a maritime State, certain obligations and confers upon it certain rights arising out of the sovereignty which it exercises over its maritime territory. The possession of this territory is not optional, not dependent upon the will of the State, but compulsory. In the ninth edition of Oppenheim’s International Law, the nationality of ships in the high seas has been referred to in paragraph 287, wherein it has been observed that the legal order on the high seas is based primarily on the rule of International Law which requires every vessel sailing the high seas to possess the nationality of, and to fly the flag of, one State, whereby a vessel and persons on board the vessel are subjected to the law of the State of the flag and in general subject to its exclusive jurisdiction. In paragraph 291 of the aforesaid discourse, the learned author has defined the scope of flag jurisdiction to mean that jurisdiction in the high seas is dependent upon the Maritime Flag under which vessels sail, because no State can extend its territorial jurisdiction to the high seas. Of course, the aforesaid principle is subject to the right of ‘hot pursuit’, which is an exception to the exclusiveness of the flag jurisdiction over ships on the high seas in certain special cases.