584 
support that it gives for the position of the sections of the American 
Bar Association that the exclusive sovereign rights of the United 
States include the entire continental terrace down to its junction with 
the deep ocean floor, and are not limited to the geological Continental 
Shelf. 
Some time ago the United Nations created the International Law 
Commission, which is designed to simplify and codify international 
law. In 1949, the assembly referred to the Commission the question of 
the codification of the law of the sea. 
In 1951, the Commission submitted a partial report in which it recom- 
mended that the jurisdiction of the coastal nations should extend to 
“. . . the seabed and subsoil of the submarine areas contiguous to the 
coast, but outside the area of territorial waters, where the depth of the 
superjacent waters admits of the exploitation of the natural resources 
of the seabed and subsoil.” 
This contained no 200-meter depth limit at all. 
In 1953, the Commission proposed new language which said instead, 
“, . the seabed and subsoil of the submarine areas contiguous to the 
coast, but outside. the area of the territorial sea, to a depth of 200 
meters,” saying nothing about exploitability. 
This about-face of the Commission was totally unacceptable to the 
Organization of American States. The 20 American nations, including 
the United States, met at Ciudad Trujillo in 1956 and adopted a resolu- 
tion which insisted there will be added to the 200-meter limit the con- 
cept of exploitability, and this was referred back to the International 
Law Commission, which agreed with it in 1956. In 1958 the Conference 
on the Law of the Sea adopted the Commission’s recommendations, 
which included this language of exploitability, and it had before it the 
report of the Commission, saying it was doing so in response to the 
malstenee of the Ciudad Trujillo declaration of the 20 American 
tates. 
To refer back to the Ciudad Trujillo declaration, it stated that “The 
American States are especially interested in utilizing and conserving 
the existing natural resources on the American terrace (shelf and 
slope), and that the exploitation of the continental terrace should be 
included as a possibility in the declaration of the rights of the 
American States. 
Thereafter, the Convention on the Continental Shelf was referred to 
the Senate and the President by the State Department and in so doing, 
the State Department made it clear that the convention did indeed 
incorporate in its exploitability concept the objective insisted upon at 
Ciudad Trujillo. 
The chairman of the American negotiating team at Geneva was 
Arthur Dean, and he told the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations: 
The clause which protects the right to utilize advances in technology at greater 
depths beneath the oceans was supported by the United States and was in keeping 
with the inter-Amedican conclusions at Ciudad Trujillo in 1956. It was included 
in the I.L.C. 1956 draft. 
While no legislative history is conclusive, as you gentlemen know 
better than I do, this comes as close to it as any I have seen. Our Gov- 
ernment has won cases on much weaker legislative history, and ought 
not to surrender this one. 
