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.

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.

Contributors. PART I: SETTING THE SCENE. 1. Introduction, Peter J. Cook, Chris M. Carleton. 2. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, Jean-Peirre Levy. 3. Legal Aspects of the Continental Shelf, Robert W. Smith, George Taft. 4. Characteristics of Continental Margins, Philip A. Symonds, Olav Eldholm, Jean Mascle, Gregory F. Moore. 5. Resources of the Continental Margin and International Law, Victor Prescott. PART II: METHODOLOGY. 6. Geodetic Techniques, Alan Dodson, Terry Moore. 7. Historical Methods of Positioning at Sea, Adam J. Kerr. 8. Satellite Positioning Methods, Chris Hill