Provisional Measures And Interventions In Maritime Delimitation Disputes

Chapter Summary

During the second part of the XX century, the law of the sea underwent a series of successive changes enshrined; (i)in the 1958 Geneva Conventions on the law of the Sea (ii)in the single 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The traditional legal dual régime of the seas, characterised by the distinction between territorial sea and high seas, was replaced by a plural system which, inter alia, encompasses, together with an extension of the traditional breadth of the territorial sea, the recognition of new coastal States' jurisdictions in marine and/or submarine spaces formerly belonging to the high seas. This development explains why maritime delimitation has acquired in contemporary international relations a dimension that it has lacked in the past, as revealed by a mere comparison of the case law of the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) respectively.

Keywords: coastal States' jurisdictions; Geneva Conventions; high sea; International Court of Justice (ICJ); maritime delimitation; Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ); territorial sea; United Nations Convention