Abstract
The conventional law regarding fishing rights has had a long and complicated development. Beginning before the concepts of international law as we know them were at all defined, it has played its part in shaping that law and in influencing its development. Many of the earliest fishing treaties were concerned with insuring freedom from molestation while fishing. From that time when the sea was a place of “war of everyone against everyone” the conventional law regarding fishing rights passed through the period of the struggle between the rival claims of mare clausum and mare liberum and played a part in the solution of that controversy. It likewise has been significant in the development of the idea of territorial waters as we know it today. It has helped determine both the limits assigned to and the rights enjoyed within those limits. In any future development of maritime law it will undoubtedly play its part.

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