Is the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea Appicable to the Arctic?

The question whether the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982 Convention), also called the Constitution for the Oceans, applies to the Arctic seems to be a valid question in view of a new strand that can be discerned in Russian legal writings since a decade now pretending this might not be the case. In order to try to find an answer to this question, the 1982 Convention will first be scrutinized, together with the ten years of negotiations that preceded it as well as some relevant earlier state practice. Subsequently, the above-mentioned new tendency in the Russian literature will be analysed as it propounds a different view than what the genesis of the 1982 Convention and earlier state practice would seem to suggest. The relative weight of this new tendency within the broader context of Russian legal scholarship, as well as its power to influence the official governmental position will be addressed next. After having considered all arguments, this article returns in its conclusions to the basic question raised in the very beginning in order to provide an answer to it.