Considering the voluminous literature on international judicial and arbitral settlement, it may at first seem surprising that there has been relatively little interest shown by international lawyers in the problem of enforcement of the decisions rendered—a matter which is regarded as crucial in other areas of international law and organization. Yet the reasons for this lack of attention are not difficult to discern. Mainly it has been taken for granted that states which voluntarily submit their disputes to arbitral or judicial procedures will comply with the decision of the tribunal, and that if they were not prepared to run the risk of an adverse decision, they would not have submitted the case for adjudication in the first place.

Most comprehensively viewed, the international law of the sea comprises two very different sets of principles. One set of principles, establishing certain basic, overriding community goals, prescribes for all states the widest possible access to, and the fullest enjoyment of, the shared use of the great common resource of the oceans. The other set of principles, commonly described as jurisdictional, expresses certain implementing policies designed economically to secure the basic community goals of shared use by establishing a shared competence among states in a domain largely free from the exclusive public order of any particular state.