Historic Bays as a "Safety Valve" in Codification of the Law of the Sea

Abstract

The treaty conditions on status of bays are based on the conventions concluded in 1958 and 1982 within United Nations in the process of codification of law of the sea. Interestingly they possess almost the same wording and are included in Articles 7 and 10 of the 1958 Geneva Convention on Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone and 1982 United Nations Convention of Law of The Sea respectively. However, both articles stipulate that their provisions do not apply to so-called "historic" bays. According to this theory states are allowed to claim on historical grounds bays failing to fulfill the requirements specified by the aforementioned conventions for juridical ones. It means that this exception excludes not only conventional regulations regarding delimitation of bays including the maximum length of their closing line, but also the definition of a bay itself and semi – circle test as well. Therefore the historic bays concept seemed to be one of the crucial points in the codification of law of the sea. In the present article author makes an attempt to examine the formation of the legal situation of bays in historical terms as a basis of historic bays concept.