Prospective Anglo-Scottish Maritime Boundary Revisited

Mahdi Zahraa

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Abstract

The inauguration of the devolved Scottish Parliament has given greater relevance to the question of whether Scotland should have complete independence from the rest of the United Kingdom. For an international lawyer, this raises the question of what might be the prospective continental shelf boundary between England and Scotland. The present article is not concerned with the political or economic aspects of independence or who gets the bigger share of continental shelf¹ or its natural resources. Rather, it focuses on the legal aspects of a prospective maritime boundary delimitation between England and Scotland, taking into consideration other states' practice in relation to disputed maritime boundaries.

1 The continental shelf as understood by international lawyers nowadays consists of the geographical continental shelf - the slight slope of the submerged land up to the first substantial fall-off - and the continental slope and rise. See Article 76 of the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea (hereinafter the 1982 Convention). Thus, the whole submerged land under the shallow water of the North Sea is considered a continental shelf. For the history and development of the continental shelf doctrine, see Marjorie M. Whiteman, `Conference on the Law of Sea: Convention on the Continental Shelf', 52 AJIL (1958) 629 at 629-634; Marjorie M. Whiteman, Digest of International Law, vol. 4 (1963-1973) 814-842.

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