The Florida State College of Law Research Center Blog

The Attorney At Sea

Planning a cruise ship vacation this summer?  Settling into a deck chair with the bright Caribbean sun overhead, a frothy tropical libation in hand ...  our thoughts naturally turn to the unique aspects of Cruise Ship and Admiralty Law.  Some intriguing questions:

• Marijuana is legal in the Netherlands.  Can I smoke some on a Holland America Line ship?
• If I'm injured while on a shore excursion in a foreign country, can I sue the tour operator when I'm back home in the United States?  Should I sue the cruise line?
• My baby was born during the cruise!  What citizenship is available to him?  My home country?  The country to which the ship is registered?   The next port-of-call to whose hospital I was taken?
• If I'm the victim of an onboard crime perpetrated by a crew member, which country  has jurisdiction to prosecute?  My home country?  The crew member's home country?  The country within whose waters the ship was passing when the crime occurred? 

If you'd like to resolve some of these questions now in order to relax during your cruise, the Research Center has some suggestions for you:

• Justia.com has a brief Cruise Ship Law Overview and links to pertinent regulations.
• The Miami law firm Lipcon, Margulies & Alsina publishes the Cruise Line Law Reporter, and the informative Cruise Ship Law blog  "dedicated to cruise passenger and crew safety, seafarer conditions, maritime law and all types of injuries at sea."
• The United States Coast Guard has issued the Cruise Ship Consumer Fact Sheet.
• The treatise Benedict on Admiralty devotes its volume 10 to Cruise Ship Law.  It's available online at Lexis.com, and also in print at the Research Center (KF1104.B4 1958 v.10).

Posted by Patricia Bingham-Harper

Where was the HMS Cornwall?

The United Kingdom Ministry of Defence has released the location of the HMS Cornwall at the time 15 of its Marines were detained by Iran: "...the merchant vessel was 7.5 nautical miles south east of the Al Faw Peninsula and clearly in Iraqi territorial waters...The position was 29 degrees 50.36 minutes North 048 degrees 43.08 minutes East. This places her 1.7 nautical miles inside Iraqi territorial waters."

The FSU College of Law Library has scanned and placed on its website documents and maps from the International Boundary Studies and Limits in the Seas series.  The 1978 International Boundary Study No. 164, Iran-Iraq Boundary, contains a brief description of the boundary, the historical background for the boundary setting, an analysis of the boundary alignment (including latitude and longitude markings at pp. 6-7), and a list of documents. 

The subsequent Limits in the Seas study, No. 114, Iran's Maritime Claims, analyzes the 1993 Iranian "Act on the Marine Areas of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the Persian Gulf and the Oman Sea."  A map of Iran's claims is part of the study.  Annex 1 (p. 27) contains the text of the Act.

Posted by Mary McCormick