Territorial Waters: The Cannon Shot Rule
![handle is hein.journals/byrint22 and id is 214 raw text is: TERRITORIAL WATERS: THE CANNON SHOT RULE
By WYNDHAM L. WALKER, M.A., LL.B.
IN the days of Bynkershoek, a cannon carried approximately three miles;
hence the statement that a nation may occupy and exercise ownership over
waters three miles within low water mark. This was the solution proposed
by the young publicist; this was the solution accepted by the nations; this
is the solution still obtaining, unless modified by express consent. This
passage, taken from Dr. James Brown Scott's Introduction to the translation
of Bynkershoek's De Dominio Maris,1 is typical of the current explanation
of the origin of the three miles rule. In substance, what Dr. Scott appears
to tell us is that the modern rule of the three mile limit owes its origin to
the work of the Dutch jurist, Cornelius Van Bynkershoek; that Bynkershoek
laid down a general principle that a State was entitled to exercise sovereignty
over the maritime belt extending seawards from its shore up to the extreme
range of cannon shot; that the extreme range of cannon shot was about
three miles; and that hence three miles came to be recognized as the limit of
territorial waters. The purpose of the present article is, primarily, to explain
the cannon shot rule as understood in French Admiralty circles in the eight-
eenth century and, with the aid of illustrations extracted from documents
in the French archives, to examine the-truth of some of the propositions
laid down in the passage above cited.
That Bynkershoek himself never mentions a three mile limit is certain.
The rule he mentions is a limit of cannon shot from the shore. It is equally
certain that Bynkershoek did not invent the cannon shot rule. It was a
rule existing in practice, at any rate for purposes of maritime neutrality in
time of war, definitely in France and most countries with a Mediterranean
seaboard, and probably in Holland many years before the time of Bynker-
shock. It is questionable whether any cannon, either when Bynkershoek
wrote or much later in the eighteenth century, had a range of as much as
three miles. And despite much distinguished testimony to the contrary, it
is submitted that if what Bynkershoek actually wrote is compared with the
cannon shot rule as received by the statesmen of his time in practice, it is
doubtful whether the writer meant to do more than to approve that rule. If
he did not, there is to be found in the works of the Dutch jurist no trace
even of a doctrine of a uniform maritime belt stretching seawards along the
entire coastline of a State; he deals rather with a series of protected zones,
in the ports and places covered by the actual guns of fortresses placed on
the shore.
Professor Jessup, in his treatise on The Law of Territorial Waters (1927),
seems, perhaps, to give Bynkershoek rather more than his due when he
writes:
It remained for a judge of the Supreme Court of Appeal of Holland to translate
this idea [that expressed by Grotius, lib. II, cap. III, section XIII. 2] into a maxim
Classics of International Law, Carnegie Endowment Series, 1923, p. 17.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/byrint22&div=12&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Territorial Waters: The Cannon Shot Rule
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