State Territory

In one line

A State's territory is the space in which it is sovereign, and it is made of land, water, airspace and subsoil, each with its own boundary rule.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: State territory is the portion of the globe subject to the sovereignty of a State. It comprises the land within the State's boundaries, the subsoil beneath it, its internal waters, its territorial sea and the seabed and subsoil beneath that, and the airspace above all of them. Sovereignty over territory means the exclusive right to exercise the functions of a State within it, subject only to limitations imposed by international law.

Why territory is the centre of the subject

Sovereignty is territorial. Almost every rule you have met so far is a rule about who may do what, where.

Jurisdiction is presumptively territorial, as [State Jurisdiction] shows. Recognition of a State asks whether an entity has a defined territory. Responsibility often turns on what a State permitted within its own territory, which is what the Corfu Channel case decided. And the whole of the law of the sea, which is most of this module, is an argument about how far a State's territory reaches out from its coast.

So this chapter fixes the boundaries of the container that the rest of the module fills.

What territory is made of

Land

The land surface within the State's frontiers, however those frontiers were fixed: by treaty, by award, by long acquiescence.

Subsoil. Sovereignty extends downwards indefinitely, or at least as far as the State can reach. Minerals, groundwater and tunnels beneath the surface are within the territory.

Enclaves are parts of a State's land territory wholly surrounded by another State's. They are territory like any other, and their difficulty is access rather than title.

Waters

Three kinds, and keeping them apart is essential for the rest of the module.

Internal waters are the waters on the landward side of the baseline from which the territorial sea is measured: ports, harbours, river mouths, bays within closing lines, lakes and rivers within the State. Article 8 of the Convention on the Law of the Sea says so. Sovereignty over internal waters is as complete as over land, and there is no right of innocent passage in them, save in one case dealt with in [Baselines and the Territorial Sea].

The territorial sea is the belt of sea adjacent to the coast, up to twelve nautical miles from the baseline. Article 2 provides that the sovereignty of a coastal State extends beyond its land territory and internal waters to an adjacent belt of sea, described as the territorial sea, and to its bed and subsoil and to the air space over it, and that this sovereignty is exercised subject to the Convention and to other rules of international law. The qualification matters: the territorial sea is territory, and foreign ships have a right of innocent passage through it, which they do not have on land.