The Juridical Bay

Book excerpt: This first work in the new Oxford Monographs in International Law Series to be edited by Ian Brownlie, QC, FBA, is a study of juridical bays. In 1958, against a backdrop of increasing international tensions regarding rights to and control of waters enclosed by coastal indentations, the world community, in a historic compromise reached under United Nations auspices, adopted Article 7 of the Geneva Convention "On the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone". Recognizing the need to balance the self-protective interests of coastal states and the international interests of a harmonious world community, the signatories to Article 7 decided, in effect, that once the water enclosed within a coastal indentation met the requirements set out under Article 7, an irrebutable presumption had been raised that the claimant state owned these waters as a matter of right against all other states. Well-drafted and remarkably unambiguous, Article 7 should have resolved the issue of unreasonably expansive bay claims forever, but, in fact, it did not. Disputes continued to arise. In the twenty years since its adoption, despite continuing national and international disputes, Article 7 has not received the analysis necessary to help it become a more reliable basis for conflict resolution in cases involving complex coastal configurations. This study, the first major examination of Article 7, interprets both its text and context and more importantly, offers solutions to some of the problems that continue to make the question of coastal bay-type waters sources of national and international conflict.