Power Sharing in the Law of the Sea

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea is a fact. It exists. Whether or not it becomes a fully operational treaty-signed, ratified, in force, widely supported, generally followed-it is and will be the cause of significant effects. Its very existence modifies political, economic, and legal relationships in countless ways whose direction and intensity we can predict only in a most speculative way. What we can say in advance is that the effect of the Convention— its own fate as a treaty and its impact on international relations— will substantially depend on how it is perceived.