The Law of Territorial Waters of Mid-Ocean Archipelagos and Archipelagic States

It is a truism that the increasingly rapid movement in technology is forcing change and shift in the norms of international law. The 149 states of the Law of the Sea Conferences of the United Nations have been attempting to establish and develop adequate legal norms that will take into account the need for the orderly growth and use of the changing technological capabilities and the resulting economic development that cannot and should not be hindered by in adequate law. When such norms are identified and agreed by a substantial majority of states, they are usually set out and placed into multilateral treaties. The rules governing the resource and non-resource allocation of the oceans and the uses ofthe oceans have posed major difficulties for the development of international law for many years. The Geneva Conference of 1958 building upon the groundwork of the International Law Commission of the United Nations shaped a rough structure for a 20th Century Law of the Seas and for mulated the effort in four major international conventions. But a majority of the states failed to ratify or accede to the conventions. Even had they become effec tive as the expression of the Law of the Seas in the second half of the 20th Cen tury, there was one glaring area of omission: a conventional law for the waters of mid-ocean archipelagos and archipelagic states.

I. Introduction. - II. General Discussion of Traditional Terms and Governing Concepts Regarding Law of the Sea. - Internal Waters. - Territorial Sea. - Baselines. - Innocent Passage. - Contiguous Zone. - Continental Shelf. - High Seas. - III. General Discussion of the Law of Territorial Waters of Islands and Coastal Archipelagos as distinguished from the Law of Territorial Waters of Mid ocean Archipelagos and Archipelagic States. - Definitions. - An Island Adjacent to a Coast. - Artificial Structures as Islands. - Islands, Rocks, Promontories that are Part of a Coastal Configuration. - Controversies Arising Out of the Legal Treatment of Groups of Offshore Islands. - IV. A Review of the Historical and Traditional Approaches to the Application of the Law of Territorial Waters of Mid-Ocean Archipelagos and Archipelagic States. - Private Scientific and Scholarly Organizations. - The Hague Codification Conference, 1930 (Conference for the Codification of International Law, League of Nations). - Preparatory Work of the International Law Commission. - Geneva Conference on the Law of the Sea, 1958. - Customary International Law. - Treaties as Evidence of Customary International Law. - Legislative and Executive Decrees, Declarations and the Practice of States. - Publicists and Legal Writers Usually State the Problem in Traditional Terms. - Leading Law Review Articles Treat the Problem in Traditional Terms. - V. Proposed Solutions to the Problem, in General. - The Guidelines of the Archipelagic States, Dated March 14, 1973. - The Formal Proposal of the Archipelagic States, Dated August 6, 1973. - The United Kingdom Proposal as Representative of the Views of the General Maritime States. - The Geographers Proposals. - VI. On the Emerging Definition of an Archipelagic State. - The Philippines. - The PhilippineDeclaration. - The Philippine Declaration in Practice. - Indonesia. - The Indonesian Declaration. - The Indonesian Declaration in Practice. - An Archipelagic State Defined. - VII. A Proposed Recommendation for Determining the Territorial Waters of Archipelagos (Whether Constituting a single state or portion of a state). - The Classic Problem of the Resolution of Conflicting Interests in the Law of the Sea: Special Interests v. General Interests. - Limitations on the Use of Precedent. - Proposed Solution. - Fishing Rights. - Appendixes. - Table of Cases.