Arctic Legal System

The Arctic does not have a legal system of its own because the region does not enjoy any legal status recognised by the international community. Instead, it is a geographic space both within and beyond, the jurisdiction of several circumpolar nations generally referred to as the Arctic states. Eight countries share the Arctic region within their jurisdictional boundaries. Five are considered Arctic coastal states (or Arctic littoral states) because they share maritime areas in the Arctic Ocean: Canada, Denmark (through Greenland), Norway, Russia and the United States. The other three, Iceland, Finland and Sweden, are in the Arctic region but do not have coastlines on the Arctic Ocean.  

The Arctic Ocean consists of 14 million square kilometres of the maritime area, which include areas within, and beyond, national jurisdiction. Because of this geographic composition, the Arctic legal order is a complex set of national and fragmented international and transnational regulations. While national regulations apply to each part of the Arctic within the sovereign jurisdiction of each Arctic state, international laws bind all the nations, including the Arctic states, that have agreed to abide by such regulations. In other words, the countries are bound by specific international rules they ratify following the procedures suggested by international law, known as the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT). For example, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is an international regulation containing comprehensive mechanisms for the governance of the world's oceans and seas. It is often referred to as the Constitution of the Ocean, binding all of the Arctic nations except the United States. The latter has not ratified the UNCLOS.  

Because the US has not ratified the Convention, the rules of UNCLOS do not restrict its behaviour. Nevertheless, the United States is bound to follow customary international law; an agreed-upon set of regulations observed by nations and practised consistently and continuously over a long period based on the belief that such behaviour is an act of law – the so-called opinion juris. The UNCLOS codified most of the rules of customary law, thereby binding the United States to the provisions of the traditional rules as part of the law of the sea. Hence, the law of the sea, including the UNCLOS, provides an overarching legal framework for governing the Arctic that includes actors from both within, and beyond, the Arctic.

Additionally, regulations of the Arctic states are also influenced and sometimes adjusted, by several international rules having transnational effects. For example, regulations concerning environmental impact assessments are contained in the laws of many countries. While implemented nationally, they also apply to actions proposed within their Arctic jurisdictions. Consequently, the Arctic legal system includes laws that apply to the individual countries, either as part of national and international law, and those adopted and enforced by all of the states as part of international law for the protection of the Arctic region. As such, the Arctic legal system recognises the involvement of both state and non-state actors at various levels.