The North Sea Continental Shelf Cases—A Critique

1970 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Friedmann

The decision of the International Court of Justice in the North Sea Continental Shelf Cases is surely one of the most interesting as well as debatable decisions in the history of the Court. It deals with certain aspects of one of the most important new developments of international law, the doctrine of the Continental Shelf. It also touches on some basic problems of the sources of international law. Among the matters dealt with, in greater or lesser detail, by the Court are the formation of custom in contemporary conditions, the effect of custom upon treaty and, in turn, the possible translation of principles formulated in a multilateral treaty, into universal custom. Above all, the Court was compelled to formulate certain principles of general equity as applicable to the delimitation of the continental shelves between three of the coastal states of the North Sea. It is this attempt of the Court to formulate the general principles of equity applicable to a fair allocation of the resources of the Continental Shelf between neighbors with which the present article will be mainly concerned.

1970 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 562-593 ◽  
Author(s):  
Etienne Grisel

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.


Author(s):  
d'Aspremont Jean

This chapter focuses on the norm-creating character of the standard whose customary status is tested as another possible constitutive element of customary international law. It examines the third constitutive element of customary international law, which is the common recognition by international law of the enormous definitional powers to the International Court of Justice when it comes to the custom-identification criteria. It also explores the discursive performance that consists of the constant turning of a blind eye to a specific claim made by the Court in the 1969 North Sea Continental Shelve. The chapter highlights the 1969 North Sea Continental Shelf wherein the Court confirmed the dualistic approach and the consciousness of having a duty may be in order to offer an articulate definition of opinio juris for the first time. It argues that the requirement that the standard whose customary status is tested must be norm-creating as it was prescribed by the Court in the North Sea Continental Shelfcase.


1986 ◽  
Vol 80 (4) ◽  
pp. 896-901 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manfred Lachs

To write of Philip Jessup means to survey the history of the teaching of international law in the United States throughout the last half century; to cover all important events concerning the birth of international organizations on the morrow of the Second World War; to visit the halls of the General Assembly and the Security Council; to attend meetings of the American Society of International Law and the Institute of International Law, where he so frequently took the floor to shed light on their debates; to attend sittings of the International Court of Justice in the years 1960-1969. I could hardly undertake this task; there are others much more qualified to do so. What I wish to do is to recall him as a great jurist I knew and a delightful human being; in short, a judge and a great friend whom I learned to admire.


2005 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Thomas ◽  
Y. Bozec ◽  
H. J. W. de Baar ◽  
K. Elkalay ◽  
M. Frankignoulle ◽  
...  

Abstract. A carbon budget has been established for the North Sea, a shelf sea on the NW European continental shelf. The carbon exchange fluxes with the North Atlantic Ocean dominate the gross carbon budget. The net carbon budget – more relevant to the issue of the contribution of the coastal ocean to the marine carbon cycle – is dominated by the carbon inputs from rivers, the Baltic Sea and the atmosphere. The North Sea acts as a sink for organic carbon and thus can be characterised as a heterotrophic system. The dominant carbon sink is the final export to the North Atlantic Ocean. More than 90% of the CO2 taken up from the atmosphere is exported to the North Atlantic Ocean making the North Sea a highly efficient continental shelf pump for carbon.


2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Arthur Bourassa ◽  
Tove Husby ◽  
Rick Deuane Watts ◽  
Dale Oveson ◽  
Tommy M. Warren ◽  
...  

2005 ◽  
Vol 93 (2-4) ◽  
pp. 131-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yann Bozec ◽  
Helmuth Thomas ◽  
Khalid Elkalay ◽  
Hein J.W. de Baar

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