Steering Between Scylla and Charybdis: The Northwest Passage as Territorial Sea

Abstract

Heightened attention is being paid to the Northwest Passage, the waters that flow among the islands of northern Canada and that, in the next decades, may be amenable to commercial navigation. Most debates regarding the Passage's legal status focus on Canada's contention that it is its internal waters and the United States’ contention that it is an international strait. This article proposes that a designation of the Passage as Canada's territorial sea would be as legally robust as the internal waters or international strait designations while satisfying both Canada's and the United States’ political objectives.