The judge, maritime delimitation and the grey areas

Abstract

The delimitation of maritime areas between neighbours is of vital impor-tance in that it provides for stable and long-lasting relations. With the maritime boundary delimitation, international law has been enriched with a new chapter that has developed steadily in proportion with the related challenges and expectations. After nearly a century of practice, international courts and tribunals achieve a very useful result in boundary delimitation: a single maritime boundary employing the now well-established three-stage equidistance-relevant-circumstances method. The paper examines the Wade-mecuum of the move and the emergence of jurisprudence addressing delimitation of a State's maritime entitlements located beyond 200 nautical miles from the baselines, i.e., the so-called Outer Continental Shelf and the legal regime thereof.