Zur völker- und verwaltungsrechtlichen Einordnung der zivilen Seenotrettung

This article takes the recent debate concerning the risk of criminalization of civil search and rescue activities by the new version of Section 96(4) of the German Residence Act as an opportunity to examine the legal regime concerning civil sea rescue as it results from public international law and German administrative law. The existing legal literature almost exclusively deals with the phenomenon of civil sea rescue from the perspective of public international law. As a result, key rules of national public law are often either ignored or their significance for the legal assessment of civil sea rescue is misjudged. We therefore intend to fill a gap in the existing literature by devoting particular attention to these important rules of domestic law insofar as they implement and complement the relevant rules of public international law. The first section of this article addresses the duty to rescue at sea in the narrower sense. The second section deals with the coordinating role of the maritime rescue coordination centers and the duty to comply with the orders of these State authorities. The third section is devoted to the scope of the duty to rescue at sea and, in particular, the central issues of the allocation of a place of safety and the related question of disembarkation of rescuees. Finally, the article turns to atypical situations that are not in line with the codified provisions of the law of rescue at sea, including port entry with reference to the customary right of vessels in distress to seek refuge in port.