Caso 1.- Desmontaje por separado de cada ventilador

Facts:

On 29 March 1979, Canada and the United States of America signed a Special Agreement by which the Parties decided to refer to the Court a long-standing dispute between them concerning the maritime delimitation of the fisheries zones and continental shelf in the Gulf of Maine. The proceedings were instituted on 25 November 1981 by the filing of a Special Agreement with the International Court of Justice. The Agreement called upon the Court to decide upon the conflicting claims in accordance with

"the principles and rules of international law applicable in the matter as between the Parties". (Canada and U.S. asked the Court to delimit both the continental shelf and exclusive fishing zone in the Gulf of Maine area using only a single boundary.)

The Parties agreed that the starting point of the delimitation (44o 11’ 12” N, 67o 16’ 46” W), called point A, was the first point of intersection of the two lines representing the limits of the fishing zones claimed, respectively, by Canada and the United States when they decided upon the extension of their fisheries jurisdiction up to 200 nautical miles.

The two Parties agreed at the outset that the Gulf of Maine area had two parts, which the United States characterized as its "interior" and "exterior" components and Canada referred to as its "inner" and

"outer" portions. There was also early agreement that the continental shelf of the Gulf of Maine area is part of a single, uninterrupted North American Atlantic seaboard and that its geological structure is

"essentially continuous".

The applicable principles and rules of international law. (What are the rules, methods applicable?) Principles under Article 6 of Continental Shelf Convention. Any delimitation of the continental shelf effected unilaterally by one State, regardless of the views of the other/s concerned, is in international law not opposable to those States. States have a duty to negotiate with a view to reaching an agreement and to do so in good faith with a genuine intention to achieve a positive result. Any delimitation must be effected by agreement between the States concerned either by the conclusion of a direct agreement or by some alternative method which must be based on consent. And any agreement or other equivalent solution should involve the application of equitable criteria - those derived from equity which are not in themselves principles and rules of international law.

Fundamental norm in delimitation: the boundary is determined according to the applicable law, in conformity with equitable principles, having regard to all relevant circumstances, in order to achieve an equitable result. A more complete, precise reformulation of the fundamental norm, prescribed by general international law for all maritime delimitations between neighbour states:

(1) No maritime delimitation between States with opposite or adjacent coasts may be effected unilaterally by one of those States. Such delimitation must be sought and effected by means of an agreement, following negotiations conducted in good faith and with the genuine intention of achieving a positive result. Where, however, such agreement cannot be achieved, delimitation should be effected by recourse to a third party possessing the necessary competence.

(2) In either case, delimitation is to be effected by the application of equitable criteria and by the use of practical methods capable of ensuring, with regard to the geographic configuration of the area and other relevant circumstances, an equitable result.

Continental Shelf Convention inapplicable. If the goal is only a delimitation of the continental shelf, then the mandatory application of Art. 6 is undisputed. However, the goal of this proceeding is to draw a single delimitation line for both the continental shelf and the superjacent fishery zone. It is doubtful whether a treaty obligation which is in terms confined to the delimitation of the continental shelf can be extended to a field which is evidently greater and fundamentally different. To do so would make the maritime water mass over the shelf a mere accessory of the latter, and this is unacceptable.

Equitable criteria. There has been no systematic definition of the equitable criteria for use in international maritime delimitation. Examples of criteria used: (classic formula) that the land dominates the sea; the equal division of the areas of overlap of the maritime and submarine zones appertaining to the respective coasts of neighbouring States, in cases where there are no special circumstances;

whenever possible, the seaward extension of a State's coast shouldn t encroach on areas that are too close to the coast of another State; the prevention, as far as possible, of any cut-off of the seaward projection of the coast or of part of the coast of either of the States concerned; and in certain circumstances, the appropriate consequences may be drawn from any inequalities in the extent of the coasts of two States into the same area of delimitation. The essential fact to remember is that the criteria are not rules of law and therefore mandatory in the different situations, but "equitable", or even

"reasonable", criteria, and that what international law requires is that recourse be had in each case to the criterion, or the balance of different criteria, appearing to be most appropriate to the concrete situation.

Proposed methods by the Parties. The US proposed the method of the perpendicular (a vertical line, perpendicular to the general of the coast). Canada relied on the equidistance method Issue:

What method should be used Held:

Regarding the method to be used. None of the potential methods for delimitation has intrinsic merits which would make it preferable to another in the abstract.

There is no single method which intrinsically brings greater justice or is of greater practical usefulness.

The greater or lesser appropriateness of one method or another can only be assessed with reference to the actual situations in which they are used, and the assessment made in one situation may be entirely reversed in another. Nor is there any method of which must be preferred, a method with whose application every delimitation operation could begin, albeit subject to its effects being subsequently corrected or it being even discarded in favor of another, if those effects turned out to be clearly unsatisfactory.

prolongations of the United States and Canadian coasts in the continental shelf of the delimitation area.

As to the water column, the Chamber concluded that the great mass of water belonging to the delimitation area possessed the same character of unity and uniformity, which led to an impossibility to discern any natural boundary capable of serving as a basis for carrying out a delimitation of the kind requested by the Parties.

The Chamber noted that, as to the possibility of drawing a single boundary delimiting both the continental shelf and the fisheries or exclusive economic zones, there was no rule of international law to the contrary and there was no material impossibility in drawing a boundary of this kind.

The Chamber believed that, although article 6 of the 1958 Convention would have been mandatory in respect of the delimitation of the continental shelf between Canada and the United States, there was no obligation to apply it to the delimitation of a single maritime boundary for both the continental shelf and the superjacent fishery zone.

Finally, the Chamber again stressed the unprecedented character of the delimitation that was required, and stated that such a delimitation "can only be carried out by the application of a criterion, or combination of criteria, which does not give preferential treatment to one of the two objects to the detriment of the other." . As a result, the Chamber felt bound to turn towards "an application to the present case of criteria more especially derived from geography," this being understood to be "mainly the geography of coasts, which has primarily a physical aspect, to which may be added, in the second place, a political aspect."

The configuration of the coasts of the Gulf of Maine was found to exclude any possibility that the maritime boundary could be formed by a unidirectional single line. It was therefore obvious that between Point A and the Nantucket - Cape Sable closing line, the delimitation line must comprise two segments.

The Delimitation

For the first segment, belonging to the sector closest to the international boundary terminus, the Chamber drew from Point A two lines respectively perpendicular to the two basic coastal lines (from Cape Elizabeth to the international boundary terminus and from there to Cape Sable) and bisected the angle thus formed. The finishing point of the first segment was to be automatically determined by its intersection with the line containing the next segment.

For the second segment of the boundary, the Chamber was dealing with the "quasi- parallelism"

between the coasts of Nova Scotia and Massachusetts, and realized that corrections should be made in order to take into account the difference in length between the respective coastlines of the Parties.

The ratio between the coastal fronts of the two States had to be applied to a line drawn across the Gulf where the coast of Nova Scotia and Massachusetts are nearest to each other. The second segment of the boundary would begin where the corrected median line intersected the bisector drawn from Point A and ended where it intersected the Nantucket-Cape Sable closing line.

The third segment of the boundary is the one that actually crosses Georges Bank. Since this segment would inevitably be situated throughout its entire length in open ocean, it seemed to the Chamber

“obvious that the only kind of practical method which can be considered for [delimiting the final segment]

is, once again, a geometrical method,” and that "the most appropriate is that recommended above all by its simplicity, namely in this instance the drawing of a perpendicular to the closing line of the Gulf."

Finally, the Chamber determined the precise point on the closing line of the Gulf from which the perpendicular to that line should be drawn seawards. Whether the result could be considered intrinsically equitable did not seem absolutely necessary for the first two segments of the line, since their guiding parameters were provided by geography. The third segment was the principal area at stake in the dispute because it traversedGeorges Bank.

The Chamber considered that the Parties’ contentions could not be taken into account as a relevant circumstance or as an equitable criterion in determining the delimitation line, and it found there was no likelihood of catastrophic repercussions for the livelihood and economic well-being of the Parties. 4.

Decision The Judgment was rendered on 12 October 1984. By four votes to one, the Chamber held that: “The course of the single maritime boundary that divides the continental shelf and the exclusive fisheries zones of Canada and the United States of America in the area referred to in the Special Agreement concluded by those two States on 29 March 1979 shall be defined by geodetic lines connecting the points with the following co-ordinates

12. SOUTHERN BLUEFIN TUNA CASES (NEW ZEALAND AND AUSTRALIA VS. JAPAN, ORDER