Mediterranean Mare Clausum in the Year 2000, An International-Law Analysis of Peacetime Military Navigational Rights, Past, Present and Future, in the Mediterranean.

摘要

The objective of this study is to identify and assess the legal prescriptions, past, present and future, concerning peacetime warship navigation in the Mediterranean, with particular attention to those norms which threaten to close the Mediterranean to peacetime navigation by naval forces of nonlittoral states. In identifying these international legal norms, it should be recognized that the prescription of rules for the oceans and seas of the world has historically been accomplished principally through custom and practice and secondarily, through multilateral conventions. The conventional lawmaking process in the post-WWII era has involved the negotiation in multilateral conferences sponsored by the United Nations of legal norms that codify existing custom and practice and, enumerate new prescriptive norms. The customary lawmaking process, meanwhile, is decentralized, evolving through a process of claim and counterclaim as participants in the international legal arena, principally sovereign states, propound certain claims to the seas and review and appraise the claims of others. In the international arena, a strict recital of norms or principles of international law is inadequate. A more expensive approach is required which discusses not only the prescriptive norms to be applied in the decisionmaking process, but also the decisionmaking process itself, including the value interests whose consideration is necessary in each case.