Dividing Coastal Waters

Abstract

In the last decade, the extension of fishing jurisdictions and the expansion of off-shore drilling have given rise to many new maritime disputes between neighboring countries seeking to delimit exclusive economic zones. Because the record of negotiated boundary treaties has been augmented case by case, there has been only partial progress in articulating general principles that should govern the maritime property right assignment. This article treats the task of fixing maritime boundaries as a problem of “fair” division. We present a trio of axioms requiring that the division should respond in natural ways to coastal changes and should be based solely on distances sea to shore. It is shown that the imposition of these conditions limits the division method to the minimum distance rule under point-by-point division or to “minimum distance”shares under an aggregate division.