LAW47415: LAW OF THE SEA

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• To develop an understanding of the law of the sea. The course considers the law of the sea as both a specialist regime within international law and as a topic of general international law. The course aims to provide both knowledge of the specific area of the law of the sea, and a greater understanding of international law by focusing on this specialised regime.

• A selection of topics in the following areas will run in each year:
• Origins of the law of the sea;
• Baselines;
• Internal waters;
• The territorial sea;
• Straits;
• Archipelagic waters;
• The continental shelf;
• The exclusive economic zone;
• The delimitation of maritime boundaries;
• The high seas;
• The International Seabed;
• Navigation;
• International fisheries;
• The marine environment;
• Pollution at sea;
• Marine Spatial Planning;
• Biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Students will have:
• A thorough knowledge of the fundamental principles of the law of the sea;
• A demonstrably in-depth knowledge of certain key aspects of the law of the sea and its relationship with wider issues in international law;
• A familiarity with the contemporary issues in the law of the sea, and its development.

Subject-specific Skills:

• Students should be able to:
• Interpret and evaluate critically relevant documents within the law of the sea and identify the theoretical and critical approaches informing their interpretation;
• Appreciate how law interacts with the physical world, in terms of boundaries, delimitation, resource management and dispute settlement;
• Identify key issues within the law of the sea, and international law more generally, such as the interaction of treaty and customary law, the interaction of law and space, and the regulation of people beyond the land.

Key Skills:

• Students should be able to:
• Demonstrate an ability to understand and analyse critically a wide variety of complex issues, drawing on a variety of materials;
• Develop expertise in conducting legal-research using materials from a variety of national and international sources;
• Describe accurately and coherently the arguments and analysis of other commentators;
• Write in a clear and structured way and to put forward issues in a scholarly manner;
• Demonstrate an ability to explore creatively complex issues in writing.

• The course will be taught through a series of introductory lectures and seminars. One term will consist of two lectures and five seminars, then the other term will have three lectures and five seminars, allocated as appropriate by the teaching team. There will be two introductory lectures of two hours at the start of each half of the course. These will take place over the first two weeks of each term. The first term will introduce the students to the fundamentals of the law of the sea as a subject. This will be formatively assessed following this initial two week period. There will then be a summative assessment at the end of the first term.
• The second term begins again with two introductory lectures on the law of the sea in context, and a first introductory seminar. This term is then broken down in to 4 topics. This will be followed by a summative essay entailing a critical evaluation of the student's research on one of the topics, displaying their substantive knowledge and analytical skills. The formative and summative papers, based on student choice of one of the topics taught, will ensure that students have

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