The 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea and its relevance to maritime disputes in the South China Sea

Abstract

The law of the sea has steadily developed over 400 years, first through customary international law based upon the practice of states and then post-World War II, increasingly through the development of new treaties. This chapter begins with a review of maritime entitlements under the law of the sea, followed by a discussion of how those entitlements are resolved, maritime boundary delimitation, and the efforts by the Philippines to settle some of its South China Sea disputes with China via United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) mechanisms. A central aspect of UNCLOS is that it confers entitlements to assert a claim over a maritime zone to a 'coastal State'. International Court of Justice (ICJ) jurisprudence is a key indicator to the rights and entitlements of coastal states in the South China Sea, and especially as to how an international court would view a request to delimit a maritime boundary.