How to Draft a Maritime Boundary

Here is an amusing example of the type of legal drafting nearly unique to international lawyers:



The delimitation shall extend from the junction of the line that is equidistant from the low water line of Barbados and from the nearest turning point of the archipelagic baselines of Trinidad and Tobago with the maritime zone of a third State that is to the west of Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados. The line of delimitation then proceeds generally south-easterly as a series of geodetic line segments, each turning point being equidistant from the low water line of Barbados and from the nearest turning point or points of the archipelagic baselines of Trinidad and Tobago until the delimitation line meets the geodetic line that joins the archipelagic baseline turning point on Little Tobago Island with the point of intersection of Trinidad and Tobago’s southern maritime boundary [. . .] with its 200 nm EEZ limit. The boundary then continues along that geodetic line to the point of intersection just described.



Did you get that? It’s an excerpt from an award by an arbitral tribunal constituted under Article 287 of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea on a dispute beween Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados. Here is a rough graphical version of that portion of the award.

The original dispute was over the seizure of Barbados fisherman in the Trinidad and Tobago’s Exclusive Economic Zone (a term of art from the Law of the Sea that refers not to territorial waters, but to waters over which a country can exercise certain economic development rights). The Arbitral Tribunal held that it lacked jurisdiction to resolve this questions with respect to fisheries, holding that the two countries are under a duty to negotiate an agreement in that respect. (Gee thanks, is that why we are paying you the big bucks? To tell us that we have a duty to reach an agreement with each other?)



In any case the tribunal included including international law heavyweights like Stephen Schwebel and Ian Browlie. The tribunal finished this arbitration in two and half years, which is not exactly speedy work, but in the world of international tribunals, not so bad (one shudders to imagine how long it would have taken the ICJ to resolve this dispute).

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