Predictability and Flexibility in the Law of Maritime Delimitation (PDF)

This fully revised new edition offers a comprehensive picture of the law of maritime delimitation, incorporating all new cases and State practice in this field. As with all types of law, the law of maritime delimitation should possess a degree of predictability. On the other hand, as maritime delimitation cases differ, flexible considerations of geographical and non-geographical factors is also required in order to achieve equitable results. How, then, is it possible to ensure predictability while taking into account a diversity of factors in order to achieve an equitable result? This, according to the author, is the question at the heart of the law of maritime delimitation. This book seeks for a well-balanced legal framework that reconciles predictability and flexibility in the law of maritime delimitation by looking at three aspects of the question: first by reviewing the evolution of the law of maritime delimitation; second, by undertaking a comparative study of the case law and State practice; and third, by critically assessing the law of maritime delimitation at this time.
'It may well however have a broader value and usefulness, as a study of the possibilities of reconciling predictability with flexibility in a particularly difficult context, that will, ..., serve as a guide when such a reconciliation is required in other fields of law' (Hugh Thirlway, Principal Legal Secretary, International Court of Justice).