Truman proclamations
Truman proclamations refer to two significant declarations made by President Harry S. Truman on September 28, 1945, which transformed the legal framework governing maritime boundaries and resource rights. As World War II concluded, the U.S. recognized the need to assert control over submerged lands and minerals on the continental shelf, primarily for conservation and sustainable resource management. These proclamations challenged the traditional principle of the high seas, where nations had largely exercised freedom of navigation and resource competition.
The proclamations established U.S. jurisdiction over its continental shelf and allowed for the creation of fishery conservation zones, aiming to promote responsible management of marine resources. They also encouraged negotiations to resolve overlapping claims and recognized the rights of other states to assert similar jurisdictional claims, intensifying discussions around maritime law internationally.
The global implications of the Truman proclamations led to the 1958 United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, which laid the groundwork for modern maritime law and the establishment of exclusive economic zones. Today, the principles articulated in these proclamations have been influential in shaping international treaties, customary law, and the broader understanding of maritime jurisdiction, moving from a purely geographical concept to one that incorporates functional legal regimes for ocean resources.
Truman proclamations
The Law Two proclamations issued by President Harry S. Truman claiming U.S. jurisdiction and control over natural resources of the seabed and subsoil of the U.S. continental shelf and asserting authority to establish conservation zones in the high seas for regulating fishing
Also Known As Continental Shelf Proclamation and Coastal Fisheries Proclamation
Date Issued on September 28, 1945
These proclamations represented the first unilateral claim by a coastal state to jurisdiction over mineral resources of the continental shelf and the living resources of the coastal waters. It set off a chain reaction of maritime claims by coastal states around the world and opened a new era in the international law of the sea.
As World War II neared an end, the United States began planning for its future as a major maritime power. It was involved in several international disputes over fishery rights, and similar conflicts over mineral rights seemed inevitable as improved technology made it possible to exploit previously inaccessible hydrocarbons and minerals beneath the seabed. On September 28, 1945, less than a month after the formal end of the war, President Harry S. Truman announced two proclamations that would radically alter the law of the sea.
U.S. Claims Change the Law
At that time, nations exercised sovereignty over the three-mile territorial sea (though some had already begun claiming twelve miles), but beyond that the oceans were subject to the freedom of the high seas, for centuries a fundamental principle of international law. The United States changed that with the Truman proclamations by asserting jurisdiction over the submerged lands and subsoil of the continental shelf “in the interest of conservation and prudent development of the natural resources of the seabed,” and, in the Coastal Fisheries Proclamation, the authority to establish conservation zones for regulating fishing activities. Implicit in this new “oceans enclosure movement” is the belief that states will manage and conserve resources more wisely when they have an ongoing interest in the continuing viability of the resource than when the whole world is competing for the resource in an unregulated “global commons.”
Both proclamations expressly recognized the character of the surface waters above the continental shelf and within the fishery conservation zones as high seas to assure other nations that their rights of free and unimpeded navigation would be unaffected. The proclamations called for negotiations to settle disputes that might arise when two or more states shared the continental shelf or had developed competing fisheries in U.S. coastal waters.
The proclamations also recognized the rights of other states to assert comparable jurisdictional claims, and many states soon asserted claims well beyond those of the United States, such as two-hundred-mile territorial seas in which states could exercise sovereignty and restrict the traditional freedom of navigation. The international community rejected many of these claims as excessive.
Impact
The startling speed with which states were asserting previously unjustifiable claims came to the attention of the United Nations, which in 1949 asked the International Law Commission to draft a treaty on the territorial sea. In 1958, the first U.N. Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS I) adopted four conventions: on the territorial sea and the contiguous zone, the high seas, fishing and conservation of living resources of the high seas, and the continental shelf. The latter two can be seen as direct results of the two Truman proclamations. All four went into effect during the 1960’s.
The proclamations have been influential in the development of international customary law as well. In 1969, in the influential North Sea Continental Shelf Case involving a dispute between Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands, the International Court of Justice cited Truman’s Continental Shelf Proclamation for its assertion of “equitable principles” as the basis for negotiating agreements between states with overlapping claims to a continental shelf.
In 1982, UNCLOS III adopted the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which continues to reflect the expanded coastal state jurisdiction begun with the Truman proclamations. The 1982 convention took effect in 1994 and has been ratified by most countries (but not the United States, as of 2009), and most of its provisions are regarded as customary international law, binding upon even those states that have not become parties. International treaties and international customary law both now recognize coastal state claims to the minerals of the continental shelf and to two-hundred-mile exclusive fishery zones.
Since the Truman proclamations in 1945, the world’s view of maritime jurisdiction has radically shifted from a purely geographical one to a functional approach that recognizes a variety of legal regimes for the same region of the ocean: freedom of the high seas on the surface, fisheries regulation in the water column, and mineral claims beneath the seabed.
Bibliography
Churchill, Robin, and A. Vaughan Lowe. The Law of the Sea. 3d ed. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1999. The standard text on the law of the sea, providing a clear exposition of the development and state of the law.
Gerdes, Louise I. Endangered Oceans: Opposing Viewpoints. Detroit, Mich.: Greenhaven Press, 2009. One in a series of volumes presenting countervailing arguments on issues of public concern. The section on “What ocean policies are best” discusses several issues relating to the uses of the oceans.
Hardin, Garrett. “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Science 162, no. 3859 (1968): 1243-1248. The famous, influential, and controversial essay on the dangers of leaving natural resources unregulated (such as those of the continental shelf and coastal fishery zones).
Johnston, Douglas M. The Theory and History of Ocean Boundary-Making. Kingston, Ontario, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988. A clear and cogent description and history of maritime boundaries, including fishery zones and continental shelf delimitation.
Kunich, John Charles. Killing Our Oceans: Dealing with the Mass Extinction of Marine Life. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2006. A particularly useful chapter, “Law of the Sea and in the Sea,” discusses law and legislation relating to living marine resources.
McCullough, David. Truman. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992. This Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of President Harry S. Truman provides a highly readable and thorough history of Truman’s life and administration.
Strati, Anastasia, Maria Gavouneli, and Nikolaos Skourtos, eds. Unresolved Issues and New Challenges to the Law of the Sea: Time Before and Time After. Boston: Martinus Nijhoff, 2006. An excellent collection of sophisticated, often technical, chapters analyzing a broad range of issues relating to maritime resources.