The world community is not on the brink of Armageddon because of a paucity of legal answers. Legal institutions exist. Moreover, any problem, without respect to the identity of the decision-maker, may be solved “legally”: by impartial assessment of the facts and formulation of a decision by reference to the parties’ commitments as well as to overriding community policies. Most frequently the real problem is not in arriving at an answer in law, but in enforcing an answer in law. In the final analysis, law is not only, as the Legal Eealists contend, what the courts say 2 but also what the sheriff does. Law comprises not only the verbal pronouncements of authoritative organs, but also the established patterns of behavior of the individuals composing society.

There is a saying that when a dispute lasts for a long time, it must be about something small; for if it were not, it would be in the interest of the parties to settle it. This, however, is not the case in the boundary dispute between Ecuador and Peru. The dispute is not only one of the major international issues of Latin America, but it is also dangerous, because its long history has clothed it with considerations of national prestige and honor and because it involves a very considerable extent of territory with which neither country is willing to part. Up to the present day, the two countries have attempted to settle their differences through negotiations, treaties, arbitrations and wars—only to revive them again and again. Even the 1942 Protocol of Eio de Janeiro, which seemed finally to have settled the dispute, was declared null and void by Ecuador in 1960.

The present study is a comment upon the official position of Communist China on various problems related to its internal waters, the territorial sea, and the high seas through an examination of laws, regulations, and international agreements as well as other official pronouncements. It is based primarily on China’s peacetime attitudes, although occasionally it has been necessary to take into account conditions of hostilities.

It is common knowledge that the initial time periods for the submission of written pleadings—memorial, counter-memorial, reply and rejoinder—are determined by the Court after consultation with the parties. Similarly, extensions of time limits are granted by the Court at the request of one party and after consultation with the other party or parties. The Court in both respects has been absolutely at the mercy of the parties, the formal orders made by the Court signifying its compliance with their wishes.

The open-endedness of the Continental Shelf Convention renders it vulnerable to misuse as a camouflage for extravagant claims by states seeking to extend their coastal jurisdiction far out into the abyss until, perhaps, they meet in an oceanic thalweg. The definition of the continental shelf in terms of exploitability and the inclusion of “sedentary species” among the “natural resources” of the continental shelf are the two greatest sources of this indeterminacy. Their elimination from the Convention would greatly reduce its fictional elements—the false colors it now provides for grandiose ambitions. On the other hand, the comment which follows does not purport to investigate the basic choice between accepting the exclusive competence of coastal states over sedentary fisheries and general community freedom from such competence. Assuming those issues to be beyond its scope, it is limited to the pragmatic evaluation of including sedentary fisheries within the scope of the continental shelf regime or, alternatively, of restoring a modified version of the Sedentary Fisheries Article which the International Law Commission proposed in 1951.