The law of the sea is the most successful attempt yet made to govern a space that belongs to nobody.
It divides the ocean into zones of diminishing national authority as distance from the coast increases.
Within twelve nautical miles a state exercises ; beyond two hundred it exercises almost none.
The between those limits is the source of most disputes, because it grants resource rights without full .
Islands generate such zones and rocks do not, which has turned the definition of an island into a matter of strategic consequence.
A feature that can sustain human is an island; the that applied that test found that construction does not create habitability.
Enforcement is the familiar weakness and is not evenly distributed.
A ruling against a state that refuses to appear cannot be executed, and the ruling nevertheless changes the diplomatic terrain.
Other states now cite it, and every subsequent negotiation proceeds from a position that has been narrowed.
The high seas beyond national cover almost half the planet and were until recently governed by fragments.
Fishing, shipping and cables each had their own regime, and biodiversity had none.
A treaty concluded recently created a mechanism for marine protected areas in those waters.
Whether it functions depends on and on funding, neither of which is assured.
Deep-sea mining is the next case and will test the framework in a way fishing never did.
The beyond national is designated the of mankind, a phrase with real legal content.
It requires that benefits be shared with states that have no capacity to mine, which no commercial operator regards as settled.
The regime will therefore be defined by the first licence rather than by the text.
That is how most of the law of the sea has actually been made.