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SUBMARINE BOUNDARIES 285
so, was the effect of the 1939 agreement ‘to transfer such original or
acquired rights to the Claimant Company?’1 In answer to these ques­
tions, Lord Asquith, who devoted part of his lengthy, but weighty,
Award to an analytical discussion of the status of the continental shelf
doctrine in international law, found as follows:
That the Claimants succeed as to the sub-soil of the territorial waters
(including the territorial waters of islands) and the Shaikh succeeds as to
the sub-soil of the Shelf; by which I mean in this connection the submarine
area contiguous with Abu Dhabi outside the territorial zone; viz: the
former is included in the Concession, and the latter is not; and I award and
declare to that effect.8
In the course of interpreting the agreement of 1939, the Award
dealt with two interesting points, namely,
(a) Whether the agreement was modified by the existence in inter­
national law of an established doctrine of the continental shelf so as
to attribute to it (the agreement) an additional application to the sub­
soil of the submarine areas of Abu Dhabi; and (b) Whether the
Proclamation of 10 June 1949 has the effect of establishing for the
Shaikh such rights over the submarine areas as were already trans­
ferred to the Claimants by virtue of the terms of the contract signed in
1939. Lord Asquith’s answer to these two propositions was in the
negative. On the question of the continental shelf, he found that
neither the practice of nations and the pronouncements of learned
jurists nor the draft Articles of the International Law Commission
could be regarded as establishing or even recording a settled doctrine
in international law on the continental shelf. With regard to the legal
effect of the Proclamation of 1949, Lord Asquith held that it could
not have established for the Claimants any right respecting the sub­
marine areas outside the territorial waters, since these areas did not,
legally, fall within the provisions of the contract of 1939.3 According
to Lord Asquith, the proclamations issued by the Shaikhdoms in 1949
were not ‘constitutive’ of a new right or title but rather ‘declaratory’
of a pre-existing one.4
Generally, there appears to be no concurrence among writers5 on
the legal effects of claims to the continental shelf. According to one
writer, B. B. L. Auguste, the ‘practices of States have not revealed any
uniformity’ on this subject,6 while L. C. Green is of the view that procla­
mations can amount to ‘inchoate titles requiring some measures of

11.C.L.Q. (1952), op. cit. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid.
6 See Young, R., ‘The Legal Status of Submarine Areas Beneath the High Seas’,
/f.y./.£.,45(1951), pp.225-32; Mouton, M. W., ‘The Continental Shelf’, The Hague
Recueil Dcs Cours, I (1954), p. 436; Auguste, B. B. L., The Continental Shelf: The
Practice and Policy of the Latin American States, etc. (1960), p. 82.
6 Auguste, op. cit., p. 82.