The article emphases that the current period of legal vacuum in the form of “freezing” the territorial claims of states in Antarctica, including the British Antarctic Territory, is not an unconditional guarantee means to prevent the international communication subjects’ claiming for the future sovereign and “quasi-sovereign” standing to the Antarctica and its regions with the formalization of the public authorities’ respective powers in the national legislation. The author also emphases on the relevance of improving the Antarctic’s international-legal regime. This includes the detail of unification and standardization of responsibility mechanisms for violation of the existing legal acts’ provisions that determines the procedure and conditions for international cooperation on this continent. It is proposed to consider the validity and appropriateness of the Antarctic Treaty 1959 regulations on consolidation opportunities of previously asserted rights of Contracting Parties or their claims to territorial sovereignty in Antarctica. The author believes that the rule of this legal act generates the problem of uncertainty of the States sovereign rights over the continent and its particular parts. The article also brings an argument that position on the lack of validity of the relations qualification between Britain and the British Antarctic Territory as a partnership and as the management of overseas territory are carried out directly and exclusively by the British authorities in the person of Commissioner, there is no “local” institutions of public authority and no permanent population. In addition, the category of the Kingdom’s sovereignty, which is the basic qualification under the partnership, excludes the independence of the Overseas Territories as it absorbs partnerships leveling its qualitative characteristics. The author analyzes features of the constitutional status of the Commissioner as a representative of the British Crown. It is necessary to bring the provisions of the Order of the British Antarctic Territory 1989 in line with the Antarctic Treaty 1959.
United Kingdom, Overseas Territories, British Antarctic Territory, Order, constitutional status of the commissioner, partnership, British monarch.
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