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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