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53 Duke L.J. 1779 (2003-2004)
Territorial Disputes at the International Court of Justice

handle is hein.journals/duklr53 and id is 1793 raw text is: TERRITORIAL DISPUTES AT THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE BRIAN TAYLOR SUMNER INTRODUCTION In international law and relations, ownership of territory is significant because sovereignty over land defines what constitutes a state.1 Additionally, as Machiavelli suggested, territorial acquisition is one of the goals of most states.2 The benefits of having territory, though, are only as great as a state's borders are clear, because a state's boundaries must be well defined for the modern state to function.' In many cases, however, these boundaries are subject to competing international territorial claims.4 Such claims can be generally divided into nine categories: treaties, geography, economy, culture, effective control, history, uti possidetis, elitism, and ideology.6 States have relied on all nine categories to justify legal claims to territory before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The most Copyright © 2004 by Brian Taylor Sumner. 1. See PAUL GILBERT, THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATIONALISM 91 (1998) (To claim a right to statehood is to claim a right to some territory over which the state can exercise political control.); John Agnew, The Territorial Trap: The Geographical Assumptions of International Relations Theory, 1 REV. INT'L POL. ECON. 53, 53 (1994) (asserting that the clear spatial demaraction of the territory within which the state exercises its power is one aspect of political theory definitions of the state). 2. See NICOLO MACHIAVELLI, THE PRINCE 25 (W.K. Marriott ed., J.M. Dent & Sons 1938) (1513) (The wish to acquire is in truth very natural and common ...). This principle is the state-level extension of human territoriality, or the spatial strategy to affect, influence, or control resources and people, by controlling area. ROBERT DAVID SACK, HUMAN TERRITORIALITY: ITS THEORY AND HISTORY 1 (1986). 3. GILBERT, supra note 1, at 92. See generally MALCOLM ANDERSON, FRONTIERS: TERRITORY AND STATE FORMATION IN THE MODERN WORLD 1-36 (1996) (describing the historical and modem importance of frontiers). 4. International territorial claims are claims to particular territory made by a state either seeking sovereignty or affirming its preexisting sovereignty over that territory. 5. Uti possidetis is the doctrine under which old administrative boundaries will become international boundaries when a political subdivision achieves independence. BLACK'S LAW DICTIONARY 1544 (7th ed. 1999). For example, the external boundaries of the United States after achieving independence-based on the preindependence colonial boundaries-reflected the uti possidetis principle. 6. For a discussion of these categories, see infra Part I.

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