Suchergebnisse

The Australian proclamations of September 10, 1953, claiming the continental shelf adjacent to the coasts of the Commonwealth and its Territories are interesting in several respects. They depart as to form from the British practice, and so suggest that the United Kingdom drafts have been found by the advisers to the Australian Government to be inadequate; they attempt for the first time to establish a specific relationship between the shelf and sedentary fisheries; and they raise the novel and yet important question of the competence of an Administering Power to extend the boundaries of a Trust Territory. The proclamations were issued only after careful consideration of previous claims and the academic controversies they have generated, and one may conclude from the text that, since the International Law Commission reported on the subject, the concept of the continental shelf and the character of the rights asserted in respect of it have crystallized, and that a definite pattern has now been set for future development of the law.

A rule of customary international law of recent origin has conferred sovereign rights over the continental shelf to individual states for the limited purposes of exploration and exploitation. The attribution of such exclusive jurisdiction required the delimitation of boundaries between the submarine areas appertaining to various littoral states. The importance of such partition of the seabed and subsoil is self-evident, but two points do call for comment. First, since the shelf may be considerably extended in the future according to the criterion of exploitability, the method now adopted will have a constantly growing significance. Second, the acquisition of the sea bottom by coastal nations has created inequalities between them, depending on their relative degree of technical development as well as on their geographical circumstances. The drawing of boundaries separating their respective shelves can aggravate or diminish these inequalities.

The decision of the International Court of Justice in the North Sea Continental Shelf Cases is surely one of the most interesting as well as debatable decisions in the history of the Court. It deals with certain aspects of one of the most important new developments of international law, the doctrine of the Continental Shelf. It also touches on some basic problems of the sources of international law. Among the matters dealt with, in greater or lesser detail, by the Court are the formation of custom in contemporary conditions, the effect of custom upon treaty and, in turn, the possible translation of principles formulated in a multilateral treaty, into universal custom. Above all, the Court was compelled to formulate certain principles of general equity as applicable to the delimitation of the continental shelves between three of the coastal states of the North Sea. It is this attempt of the Court to formulate the general principles of equity applicable to a fair allocation of the resources of the Continental Shelf between neighbors with which the present article will be mainly concerned.

238Sea — Maritime boundaries — Delimitation — Continental shelf — Customary international law principles regarding delimitation — Use of equitable principles in order to achieve an equitable solution — Opposite States — Relevant equitable considerations — Importance of natural prolongation — Relevance of rift zone between States — Proportionality between length of coastline and share of continental shelf — Islands — Island State with restricted coastline — Economic circumstances of States — Equidistance methods of delimitation — Whether relevant in contemporary law — Overlap between claims advanced by Parties and claims of third party StateSea — Continental shelf — Juridical nature of continental shelf — Whether rights of State to continental shelf dependent upon considerations of natural prolongation — Distance principle — Whether State entitled to continental shelf extending to distance of 200 miles from baselines irrespective of natural prolongation — Effects on delimitation — Relationship between continental shelf and exclusive economic zoneSea — Islands — Island State — Continental shelf — Whether island State to be treated differently from other States in respect of entitlement to continental shelf — Island State with small coastline — Offshore islands — Uninhabited islet — Whether to be taken into account in delimitation of continental shelf boundaryInternational Court of Justice — Jurisdiction — Special agreement — Continental shelf boundary dispute between two States referred to Court by special agreement — Claims advanced by Parties overlapping with claims made by third State — Whether Court possessing jurisdiction to determine principles or rules governing rights of third State — Whether Court required to confine itself to the delimitation of the continental shelf between the Parties in area where no third party claimsSources of international law — Customary international law — Relationship between customary international law and treaty — Convention adopted by large majority of States but not yet in force — Effect upon customary international law — Law of the Sea Convention, 1982 — Provisions regarding continental shelf delimitation — Concept of the exclusive economic zone

The proclamation of the President of the United States on September 28, 1945, declaring as a matter of policy that the natural resources of the subsoil and sea bed of the continental shelf appertain to the United States,
proves to have offered a marketable concept in the marts of international law. Six States have followed the example in the last three years, with certain notable modifications of their own, and it appears not improbable that the principle thus put forward may gain increasing acceptance in international practice. It seems appropriate therefore briefly to review various developments with respect to jurisdiction over the continental shelf, the epicontinental sea, and their resources.