In defense of free naval passage to India, the young Dutch lawyer Hugo Grotius in 1609 wrote a fiery pamphlet: Mare Liberum. The work that laid the foundation of international maritime law is becoming increasingly controversial.
To mark the 400-year anniversary of Mare Liberum (The Free Sea), the book first propagating the principle that the seas are international territory, free for all nations to use for seafaring trade, a revised English edition of the pamphlet was published last week. But not everyone thinks the foundations for maritime law laid by Hugo Grotius should be celebrated today. At a conference about Mare Liberum in the Hague last Friday, maritime law professor Fred Soons said the text is now used to defend overfishing. Many of his colleagues are calling to "bury Grotius," Soons said, because they believe fishing and nature conservation are no longer compatible with the ideas of complete freedom Grotius had.
Grotius (1583-1645) was a prodigy, a lawyer, a theologist, a poet, a humanist and a founding father of international public law. But professor emeritus of Roman law Robert Feenstra, who revised Mare Liberum, says his ideas were not "terribly original" in 1609. Close inspection proved Mare Liberum is mostly a brief political tract, a one-sided legal argument which relied firmly on Grotius' contemporaries. Yet this document still determines trade and fishery today.