Abstract
The law of the sea has changed, for good or for ill. The Revised Single Negotiating TextI (hereinafter RSNT) issued in the spring of 1976 may prove to be the single most important document regarding the law of the sea since the 1958 Geneva Conventions in terms of its influence on state practice, whether by way of an ultimate treaty or otherwise. Important differences will exist regarding the extent to which portions of the text are declaratory of emerging customary international law and regarding the extent to which the text must be changed to be acceptable as a universal treaty or as customary law. Indeed, difficult questions of implementation of its principles in bilateral and other arrangements are already arising. Positions taken at multilateral conferences may differ from the positions taken in other contexts. But the text will not be ignored. Should the Conference ultimately be unable to reach agreement on a treaty, this circumstance will be one of the great ironies in the history of codification and progressive development of international law. It is readily apparent to the participants that this Conference has already achieved agreement in principle on issues that could not be resolved at the earlier Hague and Geneva Conferences and on fundamental legal questions of environmental protection that were not even faced at the earlier conferences. Some of these issues have caused serious difficulties in international relations for some time. Yet the chances for a widely acceptable treaty are in jeopardy in large measure because of fundamental political disagreement over mining of deep seabed manganese nodules-an activity that has yet to begin; that by the end of the century may account for little more than a dozen mine sites out of an area that is nearly half the size of the planet; and that is likely to have less immediate effect on the basic interests of most states than other activities dealt with in the text. In economic terms alone, the irony is apparent if one considers that the Con-
