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24 Int'l J. Marine & Coastal L. 401 (2009)
Continental Shelf Claims in the Arctic Ocean: A Commentary

handle is hein.journals/ljmc24 and id is 405 raw text is: MARIINE
MA RTI NUS                                                        AND COASTAL
NIJHOFF                     The International Journal of            LAV'
P U B L I S H E R S  Marine and Coastal Law 24 (2009) 401-408      brill.nl/estu
Continental Shelf Claims in the Arctic Ocean:
A Commentary
Vladimir Golitsyn
Judge, International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea
Professor of International Law
Moscow State University of International Relations (MGIMO-University)
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation
General Observation-Use of the Term Claim
At the IFLOS Conference' and at some other fora, it is frequently stated that
coastal States have claims with regard to the continental shelf. The use of the
term claim concerning the rights of coastal States to the continental shelf is
not correct and should be avoided for the following reasons stated below.
The continental shelf doctrine is usually traced back to the 1945 Procla-
mation by the then U.S. President Henry Truman,2 according to which:
[...] the Government of the United States regards the natural resources of the
subsoil and sea bed of the continental shelf beneath the high seas but contiguous
to the coasts of the United States as appertaining to the United States, subject to
its jurisdiction and control.'
The rights of the coastal State, according to this proclamation, are inherent.
They automatically derived from the adjacency of the continental shelf to the
coastal State. As was affirmed by the International Court of Justice in the
North Sea Continental Shelf cases in 1969:
International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (IFLOS) Symposium on Climate Change,
Conflicts and Cooperation in the Arctic, 27 September 2008, Hamburg, Germany.
2 United Nations Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea, Training Manual for
delineation of the outer limits of the continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles and for the
preparation of submissions to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (New
York, United Nations Publications, 2006), p. 1-13.
3 Reproduced in M.M. Whiteman (ed.), Digest of International Law, Vol. 4 (Washington,
D.C., U.S. Gov. Print. Off., 1965) pp. 756 etseq.

0 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009

DOI: 10. 1163/157180809X421761

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