The Legal Stability of Maritime Zones: The significance of State practice for the Interpretation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea

Abstract

Seeking to preserve jurisdictional rights in the face of climate-change induced sea-level rise, States increasingly refer to ‘legal stability’ in connection with maritime zones. Yet such a claim for preservation is at odds with the widely expressed scholarly view that baselines, and their associated maritime zones, ‘ambulate’ with coastal changes. Resolving this tension between practice and commentary is essential, given the dramatically different legal consequences that follow from the two positions. If established maritime zones may be maintained notwithstanding the physical effects of sea-level rise, States continue to enjoy their maritime entitlements, including over the valuable natural resources of the exclusive economic zone. In contrast, if maritime zones might shrink as coastlines recede, then States face the reduction or loss of such maritime entitlements. To assess whether or not a claim for the legal stability of maritime zones is plausible, this thesis poses the overarching question: to what extent does the international law of the sea provide for the legal stability of maritime zones?

The thesis presents the first scholarly effort to give substance to the understudied notion of legal stability as it relates to maritime zones.

The thesis also identifies State practice relevant to each of the three dimensions of legal stability: legislation on the normal baseline (spatial stability), legislative actions effecting baseline change (temporal stability), and State practice on the implementation of Article 121 (relating to the status of islands). Assessing each category of practice as ‘subsequent practice’ relevant to treaty interpretation, the thesis offers (re)statements of the existing law which challenge the conclusions of many scholars and lend strong support to the claim that established maritime zones may be preserved despite sea level rise.