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Ocean and Coastal Law Center - School of Law * University of Oregon - Eugene 97403
Ocean. Law emo
Issue 20
September, 1981
IN DANGEROUS WATERS
Will the Law of the Sea Treaty
Founder Under the Reagan Administration ?
Jonathan I. Charney
[Editor's introduction:
Ocean Law Memo is pleased to present
the following article by Law Professor
Jonathan I. Charney of the Vanderbilt Law
School. Professor Charney has been a
member of the U.S. Advisory Committee on
the Law of the Sea since 1973 and is widely
known as a Law of the Sea expert. This
article first appeared in the Summer 1981
issue of The Vanderbilt Lawyer. We are
grateful to Professor Charney and The
Vanderbilt Lawyer for permission to re-
print the article.]
The Third United Nations Conference
on the Law of the Sea has been engaged in
the negotiation of an international agree-
ment to govern all aspects of nations'
activities in the oceans. The session that
commenced earlier this spring at the United
Nations in New York was supposed to con-
clude the negotiations paving the way for
a formal signing ceremony this fall in
Caracas. Just before this session com-
menced, the Reagan administration announced
that it was not prepared to conclude the
negotiations and would defer its decision
pending a complete review of the entire
subject. To add emphasis to this announce-
ment it replaced the top level of the
United States delegation two days before
the negotiations were to resume. This led
one former head of the United States dele-
gation, Elliot Richardson, to dub this
action as the second Saturday night
massacre. Others have lauded the adminis-
tration's actions for preventing a give-
away to the Third World that would pre-
judice our national interests. The situa-
tion is far more complicated than either
of these statements would imply.
When the Reagan administration took
office it assumed responsibility for these
negotiations that have been in various
stages of progress since the late 1960s.
While the representative of Malta formally
initiated international discussion of the
Distributed by: OSU Extension Service' Sea
matter at the United Nations GeneraL
Assembly, the United States and the Asvi4t
Union had already begun discussions on the
Law of the Sea due to their mutual concern
that their military mobility was being jeo-
pardized by expanding claims of national
jurisdiction. They were particularly con-
cerned about the closure of international
straits, the chokepoints for international
navigation. When the issue did arise at
the United Nations those two countries and
their allies were the strongest supporters
of the initiative. President Nixon's
administration formally developed the basic
United States position for the negotiations,
and Presidents Ford and Carter continued
to press forward.
As matters evolved a multitude of sub-
jects were placed on the agenda of the
conference. They include, among others:
1. The delimitation of maritime
boundaries for the territorial sea, exclu-
sive economic zone, continental shelf, and
archipelagoes;
2. the navigation and overflight of
the high seas, territorial sea, exclusive
economic zone as well as straits used for
international navigation;
3. the exploitation of marine living
resources;
4. the conduct of marine scientific
research;
5. the protection of the marine
environment;
6. the rights of the landlocked and
geographically disadvantaged states; and
7. the regime for the exploitation
of deep seabed manganese nodules.
The resulting working draft of the
conference contains 320 articles and eicht
Grant Marine Advisory Program, Corvallis, OR 973'
September, 1981](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/ocoaslme20&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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