1982/04/01 by H. Burmester, Henry Burmester
Environmental Science · Social Sciences · #Arctic and Russian Policy Studies #International Maritime Law Issues #Maritime Security and History
paper · doi:10.2307/2201455
crossref issued 1982/04/01 · crossref published 1982/04/01 · crossref published-print 1982/04/01 · openalex publication_date 1982/04/01 · crossref created 2006/04/21 · crossref published-online 2017/02/27 · crossref deposited 2020/08/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/07/29 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
The delimitation of maritime boundaries is one of the major areas of ocean law where disputes between countries occur with frequency and where the development of governing principles of law remains difficult. At the Law of the Sea Conference, delimitation of the continental shelf and economic zones between states with opposite or adjacent coasts was one of the last issues to be resolved. Major judicial and arbitral decisions, such as the North Sea Continental Shelf cases before the International Court of Justice and the Anglo-French Continental Shelf arbitration, have gone some way to developing a body of relevant law to assist states in the solution of their maritime boundary problems. These decisions have clarified some of the relevant factors that states should take into account, but major boundary problems remain. On the Aegean Sea, Greece and Turkey have still not reached any solution; relations between Canada and the United States have been severely strained by their slow progress on maritime boundary issues; Libya and Tunisia have referred their continental shelf dispute to the International Court of Justice.