The Academy is a prestigious international institution for the study and teaching of Public and Private International Law and related subjects. The work of the Hague Academy receives the support and recognition of the UN. Its purpose is to encourage a thorough and impartial examination of the problems arising from international relations in the field of law. The courses deal with the theoretical and practical aspects of the subject, including legislation and case law. All courses at the Academy are, in principle, published in the language in which they were delivered in the "Collected Courses of the Hague Academy of International Law .

This work analyzes the management of shared fish stocks; protection of the underwater cultural heritage; the possibilities of establishing marine protected areas and other means for safeguarding vulnerable marine ecosystems; the use of the high seas for intelligence as well as recent developments on interdiction of vessels on the high seas. Special emphasis is paid to the role of international courts and tribunals in the progressive development of the law of the sea as well as the ability of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea to accommodate new uses and challenges, such as new concerns, new technological possibilities, in particular, new contexts and functions of established rules. The 1982 Convention seems capable of coping with most of them, although it remains useful to explore its possibilities and limits. This work, covering many aspects, will be useful to anyone interested in the law of the sea.

According to some commentators, forum shopping is an “evil” that must be eradicated. It has been suggested that the unification of substantive law through international conventions constitutes one way to achieve this outcome. This book shows that the drafting of uniform substantive law convention cannot prevent forum shopping. The reasons are classified into two main categories: convention-extrinsic and convention-intrinsic reasons. The former category comprises those reasons upon which uniform substantive law conventions do not have an impact at all. These reasons range from the costs of access to justice to the bias of potential adjudicators to the enforceability of judgments. The convention-intrinsic reasons, on the other hand, are reasons that relate to the nature and design of uniform substantive law conventions, and include their limited substantive and international spheres of application as well as their limited scope of application, the need to provide for reservations, etc. This book also focuses on another reason why forum shopping cannot be overcome: the impossibility of ensuring uniform applications and interpretations of the various uniform substantive law conventions.