4 Concept and Types of Prize

Prize is property captured in war as a lawful war-booty of the seas: the enemy ship and goods; the neutral ship engaged in breach of blockade; the contraband-carrier. The procedure: capture → condemnation only by a Prize Court (the belligerent's national court of prize jurisdiction — the executive's incapacity to condemn: the judicial monopoly as the neutral's protection) → on condemnation, transfer of title (the capture's jure belli perfection); on release or wrongful capture, damages/reparation (the London Declaration's compensation rules). Types of prize: (i) enemy public ships/warships (no condemnation needed — the government's own capture-and-title by war); (ii) enemy merchant ships and goods (condemnable — the absolute enemy-character rule); (iii) neutral ships in blockade-breach (Unit 5); (iv) neutral ships in contraband carriage (the conditional condemnation: the goods condemned, the ship only if the owner's/ charterer's complicity or the carrier's own contraband-contracting); (v) the special entries — the mail and relief ships' protections, the exemptions' humanitarian family. The prize law's modern eclipse: total-embargo sanctions' multilateral replacing of the unilateral prize (the historical note the close owes), while the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea's flag-state order limits the interdiction architectures to the enumerated exceptions.