This is the first book to offer a comprehensive overview of modern seaports from a legal perspective. Further, it provides a basic toolkit for establishing a legal doctrine of seaports, the instruments of said toolkit being the very few legal norms specifically targeting seaports, which are examined as such rather than through the lens of other, more established disciplines, such as the law of the sea or transportation law. It is a first, necessary step toward giving seaports the status they rightfully deserve in legal studies. Despite centuries of international law studies and decades of EU law evolution, seaports have remained stuck in limbo. From a law of the sea perspective, seaports belong to the land, an approach that is often clearly reflected in national maritime legislation. The other branches of international law do not focus on seaports, since they are considered to belong to the sea. The port communities, for their part, have availed themselves of the “port specificity” concept. In recent decades, containerization has transformed ports into key hubs of the globalized economy, but also into vital checkpoints of the War on Terror, due to the security risks posed by the millions of sealed containers circulating worldwide. Moreover, tragic maritime incidents have shown that seaports are the only reliable sentinels of the seas, being the only places where the systematic inspection of ships is feasible. This has led to the adoption of specific international and EU rules. Those rules, however, remain fragmented, highly specialized and technical; as such, they are unsuitable for creating an organic legal seaport regime: this objective can only be achieved with a significant contribution from legal doctrine.

This title provides an overview of the international law of the sea.

International Maritime Security Law by James Kraska and Raul Pedrozo defines an emerging interdisciplinary field of law and policy comprised of norms, legal regimes, and rules to address today's hybrid threats to the global order of the oceans. Worldwide shipping commerce, fishing fleets, pleasure craft, and coastal states are exposed to the menace of offshore terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, piracy, smuggling, robbery, marine insurgency and anti-access threats. Land-based institutions and maritime constabulary forces operate within an increasingly integrated network that blends elements of humanitarian law, human rights law, criminal law, and law of the sea, with inspection regimes, commercial enterprise, and marine safety and environmental stewardship. The new authorities fuse together a global maritime partnership among states, international organizations and commercial interests to protect the maritime commons from the most dangerous risks and hazards.

PORTIUS is the world's first institution to specialize in the study of international and EU law on maritime and inland ports. This book is the inaugural lecture by PORTIUS chairman Eric van Hooydonk, illustrating the rich tradition and highly dynamic nature of port law and arguing that it is integral to maritime law. The lecture also highlights numerous deviations from the general law and the preference of ports not to be subject to legal regulation.

The Belt and Road Initiative and the Law of the Sea offers insightful discussions on the use of oceans in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative covering navigational safety, marine energy and sea ports, maritime law enforcement and access of landlocked states to the sea.

This textbook on the law of the sea sets the subject in the context of public international law. It comprehensively covers the principal topics of the course, from the legal regimes governing the different jurisdictional zones, to international co-operation for protection of the marine environment and marine living resources.