1931. It follows that in interpreting and applying reservation (b) with
respect to the present dispute the Court has to take account of the evolution which has occurred in the rules of international law concerning a
coastal State's rights of exploration and exploitation over the continental
shelf. The Court is, therefore, now called upon to examine whether, taking
into account the developments in international law regarding the continental shelf, the expression "disputes relating to the territorial status of
Greece" should or should not be understood as comprising within it
disputes relating to the geographical-the spatial-extent of Greece's rights
over the continental shelf in the Aegean Sea.
81. In order to determine whether the present dispute falls within the
scope of reservation (b), the Court must first clarify the question that calls
for decision. The question is not, as Greece seems to assume, whether
continental shelf rights are territorial rights or are comprised within the
expression "territorial status". The real question for decision is, whether
the dispute is one which relates to the territorial status of Greece. Accordingly, a linguistic argument presented by the Greek Government, and
based on the definitions of the words "statut" (status) and "territorial" in
the Dictionnaire de la terminologie du droit international, appears to the
Court to be only of marginal interest. No doubt, it is true the expression
territorial status is commonly used in international law with reference to a
legal condition or régime of a territory; but although the expression, as
Article 39, paragraph 2, of the General Act itself indicates, denotes a
category or concept covering clearly specified subject-matters, it is not an
expression which can be said to have rigid legal connotations. On the
contrary, the Court considers it to be a generic expression which comprises
within its meanings various legal conditions and relations of territory. The
answer to the question whether any given matter is properly to be considered as relating to the territorial status of a State must, therefore, depend
on the particular circumstances of the case.
82. The subject-matter of the present dispute, as appears from the first
two-and principal-submissions in the Application, would require the
Court to decide two questions:
(1) whether certain Greek islands in the Aegean Sea "as part of the
territory of Greece, are entitled to the portion of the continental shelf
which appertains to them according to the applicable principles and
rules of international law";
(2) what is "the course of the boundary (or boundaries) between the
portions of the continental shelf appertaining to Greece and Turkey in