[Call for papers] Grotiana special forum
Mare Liberum in the 21st Century
The Strait of Hormuz and the Grotian Legacy
Grotiana invites article proposals for a special forum on Mare Liberum in the 21st Century: The Strait of Hormuz and the Grotian Legacy. Hugo Grotius’s Mare Liberum (1609) established the foundational principle of the high seas and international straits as common property. The escalating US-Iran conflict in the Strait of Hormuz has profoundly strained this classical legal order. This forum seeks to examine this modern maritime crisis through a Grotian lens. We welcome interdisciplinary contributions from the fields of international law, legal history and political studies.
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Hugo Grotius’s Mare Liberum (1609) established the foundational principle that the high seas and international straits are common property, open to all nations for free navigation, communication and trade, for ‘no man hath the power to grant a privilege against mankind’. However, the escalating US-Iran conflict in the Strait of Hormuz has profoundly strained this classical legal order. On the one hand, Iran allegedly threatens to close or restrict passage through the Strait of Hormuz, together with proposals to impose transit fees or maritime service charges. On the other hand, President Donald Trump reportedly proposed to levy a 20% “United States Reimbursement Fee” on transit cargo, framing the U.S. as a paid “Guardian of the Strait”, fundamentally challenging the long-standing prohibition against unilateral transit tolls on international waterways. Though Trump’sproposal was quickly replaced by regional trade and investment deals, it exposes a volatile paradigm shift: the transactional financialisation of maritime security. Combined with a U.S. naval blockade on Iranian ports, these developments threaten to replace open navigation with localised, pay-to-play protectorates. By anchoring the contemporary crisis in the Strait of Hormuz within classical maritime jurisprudence and Grotian thought, this special issue aims to interrogate whether the Grotian consensus (if ever there was one?) can survive an era of hyper-nationalist protectionism.
Grotiana invites article proposals for a special forum examining this modern maritime crisis through a Grotian lens. Shorter papers are especially welcomed and papers should not exceed 9000 in word length, including references. We welcome interdisciplinary contributions from History of International Law; International Law, History of International Law, Political Theory, History of Political Thought, Political Studies, and Diplomatic History.
Prospective article topics could address, but are not limited to:
- Re-defining Transit Passage: How unilateral blockades and “reimbursement” tolls redefine transit passage under UNCLOS and classical Grotian law.
- The Financialisation of Navigation: The philosophical, political or legal implications of treating freedom of navigation not as a global public good, but as a securitised, transactional commodity.
- The New Mare Clausum: How the historical debate between Mare Liberum and John Selden’s Mare Clausum is being re-enacted in contemporary geopolitical chokepoints.
- Sovereignty vs. Hegemony: The legal status of international straits under threat of asymmetric warfare, state-sponsored blockades, and economic extortion.
Articles may be submitted via the submission tool of Grotiana