The Lateral Boundaries of the Continental Shelf and the Judgment of the International Court of Justice in the North Sea Continental Shelf Cases

Bibliographic Data

ID9552676
AuthorsEtienne Grisel (Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, corresponding author)
Year1970
Volume64
Issue3
Pages562-593
Publication date1970-07-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Journal of International Law (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-9300 • E-ISSN: 2161-7953
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2199204
OpenAlexW2329835434
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited3

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

Continental shelf · Exclusive economic zone · Geography · International law · Jurisdiction · Littoral zone · Maritime boundary · Political science · Seabed · United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea · Arctic and Russian Policy Studies · Geology · International Maritime Law Issues · Law · Oceanography · Space exploration and regulation

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