Delimitation of Seaward Areas Under National Jurisdiction

Abstract

“… Since it is essential that all frontiers, whether on land or at sea, should be certain and definite, all rights which depend for their exercise upon territorial sovereignty must be valid up to a given line and there stop.” Very rarely, however, in treaties or in national laws are descriptions of water “boundaries” sufficiently precise to enable an engineer to lay them down on hydrographic charts, or to “demarcate” them in the waters themselves. About all one can say is that, if the base line is agreed upon, the outer limit of the territorial sea is acceptedas the envelope of the arcs of circles having a radius of three nautical miles (or any other agreed-upon limit) drawn from all points on the coast. The remark of Professor Riesenfeld may therefore be recalled: “It can probably be said without exaggeration that the law of territorial waters has been one of the most unsatisfactory portions of international law.”