State-Legal Tasks Concerning Maritime Sovereignty

This article reconstructs maritime sovereignty in the age of technological hegemony not merely as a matter of the breadth of the territorial sea, the outer limits of the exclusive economic zone, or the delimitation of the continental shelf, but as a state-legal task concerning three-dimensional maritime space composed of the sea surface, the underwater space, the seabed, and the subsoil. Contemporary maritime sovereignty can no longer be explained solely by boundary lines on a map. Its substance increasingly depends on whether the state can actually explore the sea, observe the seabed, inspect underwater infrastructure, respond to underwater disasters, and independently collect, interpret, and manage maritime data. In this sense, a human-occupied submersible is not merely a project for equipment development, but a national infrastructure for the realization of maritime sovereignty. This article first examines the constitutional meaning of maritime sovereignty in connection with Article 3 of the Constitution concerning national territory, Article 6 concerning respect for international law, Article 10 concerning the state’s duty to guarantee fundamental rights, and Article 120 concerning the management of natural resources. Maritime sovereignty is not a concept that justifies the proprietary ambition of the state. Rather, it is a constitutional concept of state responsibility for realizing fundamental rights, resource management, environmental protection, safety, international cooperation, and technological autonomy in maritime space. The article then examines the jurisdictional structure of the territorial sea, exclusive economic zone, continental shelf, high seas, and deep seabed under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and points out that the boundaries among marine scientific research, hydrographic survey, military research, and resource exploration become increasingly unclear in the age of human-occupied submersibles. In particular, in maritime areas where boundaries remain undelimited, the active exercise of maritime rights must be accompanied by cooperation in good faith and active restraint. Furthermore, this article explains maritime sovereignty from the perspective of the maritime guaranteeing state and the maritime steering state. The guaranteeing state is not a state that directly performs all public tasks. Rather, it is a state that designs structures for realizing the public interest together with public research institutes, universities, private enterprises, local governments, international organizations, and civil society, while not abandoning its final responsibility. The steering state is not a state that merely exercises prohibition, permission, and sanctions. Rather, it dynamically adjusts the distance and intensity of intervention toward the market and specialized institutions according to the degree of risk and the intensity of publicness. Accordingly, the legal regime of maritime sovereignty should develop into a smart steering order. In high-risk areas such as hull safety of human-occupied submersibles, protection of passengers’ lives, navigation near submarine cables, and investigation in militarily sensitive maritime areas, the state should reduce the distance of intervention. By contrast, in areas such as low-risk marine environmental observation or the collection of publicly accessible marine ecological data, autonomy and innovation should be respected. This article also examines the need for integrated steering of maritime space by referring to German spatial planning and maritime spatial planning. Maritime space is an area in which fisheries, ports, navigation, the marine environment, marine scientific research, seabed resources, offshore wind power, submarine cables, military security, and responses to underwater disasters overlap.