Suchergebnisse

One of the most difficult areas for maritime boundary delimitation is the seas adjacent to Central East Asia. This area, which encompasses the South China Sea, the East China Sea, the Sea of Japan, and the Yellow Sea, is surrounded by the People's Republic of China, Taiwan (the Republic of China), Japan, North and South Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Russia. Only a few of the maritime boundaries in the area have been settled, leaving most open to dispute. (See map 1, p. 726.) Efforts to settle the unresolved boundaries have not moved forward. Much has been written about the boundary disputes in this area, and efforts to resolve them have explored means other than delimitation.

This issue of the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law is devoted to the Symposium on Biological Diversity that was convened by the Journal at the Vanderbilt University School of Law on January 20-21, 1995. The focus of the Symposium was the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. Biological diversity is a relatively new term in international law and relations. The Biological Diversity Convention was one of the products of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) that was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in June of 1992. Since the Convention was a product of UNCED, its substance was influenced by the trends surrounding the entire UNCED process. The Biological Diversity Convention entered into force on December 29, 1993, after 30 states ratified it. By the time the first conference of the parties was held a year later, there were 106 parties and 30 observer states. Initially, the United States did not sign the Convention and has not yet become a party. The Bush Administration opposed the Convention, but the Clinton Administration signed the Convention and submitted it to the United States Senate for its advice and consent subject to certain understandings. For some in the United States, the Convention is controversial. The Symposium examined the Convention and issues raised by it from a global perspective and from a domestic United States perspective. Although this is a law school journal, the Symposium organizers wisely included on the program not only lawyers (from academia and government) but also persons from other disciplines, including economics, statistics, and business. Participants in the audience contributed views from other disciplines.

On July 28, 1994, the United States voted at the United Nations General Assembly in favor of a resolution endorsing the new Agreement that essentially amends the deep seabed regime (Part XI) of the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea and calls on states to ratify the Convention. Shortly thereafter, it signed the new Agreement. Plans call for the Convention to be submitted to the Senate for its advice and consent to ratification in October 1994 and for hearings to be held during the next Congress in the spring of 1995. By signing the Agreement, the United States will provisionally apply the deep seabed regime, as amended, until the United States becomes a party to the Convention or decides not to do so. In this paper I examine whether such provisional application is appropriate under the U.S. system of government.

Judgments of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and awards of ad hoc arbitration tribunals carry special weight in international maritime boundary law. On its face, the international maritime boundary law codified in the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea is indeterminate. For the continental shelf and the exclusive economic zone, the legal obligation of coastal states is to delimit the boundary "by agreement on the basis of international law, as referred to in Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice, in order to achieve an equitable solution." The article on the delimitation of maritime boundaries in the territorial sea is no more determinative despite the fact that it makes direct references to the equidistant line, special circumstances and historic title. In spite of this indeterminacy, if not because of it, coastal states have found that third-party dispute settlement procedures can effectively resolve maritime boundary delimitation disputes. As a consequence, there are more judgments and awards on maritime boundary disputes than on any other subject of international law, and this trend is continuing.