Suchergebnisse

At first sight, the Territorial Sea (Amendment) Order 19981 is an unremarkable instrument. Its explanatory note states that it amends the Schedule to the Territorial Waters Order in Council 19642 'by adding a new baseline between the Mull of Kintyre and Laggan, as well as by making minor changes to [three points scheduled in the 1964 Order] which result from the publication of a new, larger scale chart of the area'. In fact, the note is a model of economy of information disguising the difficulties which led to the Order's addition of a further straight baseline, enclosing the Firth if Clyde, to the system of straight baselines starting in the north at Cape Wrath and which, before the above amendment was made, had ended in the south at the Mull of Kintyre. This is the story behind the addition of the new segment. The sketch map indicates the general cartography of the relevant area.

On 9 September 1958 the UK government signed the Convention on the Continental Shelf, which had been concluded in Geneva on 29 April 1958 following a UN conference on the law of the sea at which three other conventions were concluded.2 On 11 May 1964 it ratified the Convention, which came into force on 10 June 1964.3 Meanwhile, on 15 April 1964, the Continental Shelf Act received the royal assent. Although the Act's long title indicates that it gives effect to certain provisions of the Convention on the High Seas,4 it does not expressly mention the Continental Shelf Convention. Yet the relationship between this Convention and the Act is more than a mere coincidence of time and title. It is the purpose of this article to investigate only one of the many important problems to which this relationship gave rise, namely how the basic concept of continental shelf rights as embodied in Article 2(1) of the Convention was incorporated into UK law. Other problems, such as the application to the shelf of UK civil and criminal law, will have to await discussion elsewhere.