Status of Maps in International Law

Abstract

Article 38 of the ICJ Statute states three basic and important sources of law namely:
international customs, international conventions and general principles of law recognized by
civilized nations; and the same are taken into consideration as decisive factors and evidences
for international litigation and arbitration. However, there have been many cases of boundary
and territorial sovereignty disputes, where the parties have relied upon maps as evidence for
adjudication of justice. Traditionally, International Courts have always negated maps as
evidence to decide the cases because of them being less fair and just a circumstantial form of
evidence which are not reliable in their entirety. Maps as evidence have only been given a
secondary and collateral position but not a primary and probative one. However, with change
in times and conditions, some of the decisions of the International Court of Justice and
Permanent Court of Arbitration have accorded maps an important evidentiary and probative
value and in fact cases have been decided based on these.. Through this research, I tend to
analyze the current status and position of maps as evidence in international law by taking into
account the changing pattern of courts’ acceptance of maps as evidence from traditional times
to recent ones by the use of case laws and judgments.