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The provision of military aid to civil authorities in Britain's maritime domain

The thrust of this thesis is that during the last quarter of a century the UK, in common with all other coastal states, has extended civil jurisdiction seawards. The extension of jurisdiction also means the extension of civil administration. In the UK there is a long tradition of civil authority primacy, with the military occupying a subordinate position. If civil administration has been extended to maritime zones it would be appropriate constitutionally for the principle of civil authority primacy to apply within those zones in the same way that it does ashore. The first part of the thesis examines the process of jurisdictional extension. It analyses the law of the sea as it stands today and compares it with the UK Government's response to it. The conclusion reached is that the UK's jurisdiction and civil administration have indeed been extended seawards. The UK is now endowed with a complex collection of maritime jurisdictions that together combine to create what is referred to as the 'maritime domain'. The juridical nature of that domain is such that it would be inappropriate not to apply accepted principles of governance to the variety of activities that are carried on within it. Having established this important initial position the thesis then goes on, in Part II, to examine various forms of military activity that might be included under the heading of Military Aid to Civil Authorities (MACA). After an examination of existing MACA Doctrine, there follows a series of chapters in which different military operations are examined in some detail. In the concluding chapters, it is asserted that those activities do qualify for inclusion in the definition of MACA. An important contribution made by this thesis is the extension of the UK's MACA Doctrine to include all forms of maritime MACA operations.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:263487
Date January 1992
CreatorsHaines, S. W.
PublisherUniversity of Aberdeen
Source SetsEthos UK
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation

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