Cite as: 521 U. S. 1 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
of Alaska's statehood. Indeed, we note that the result Alaska seeks would be in tension with the outcome of the Massachusetts Boundary Case, 475 U. S. 89 (1986), where, a year after deciding the Alabama and Mississippi Boundary Case, we concluded that the waters of Nantucket Sound are not inland waters. Following the Court's decision in the Alabama and Mississippi Boundary Case, Massachusetts argued that a 10-mile rule would make the waters of Nantucket Sound inland waters. The Master in that case recognized that no entrance between the islands enclosing Nantucket Sound exceeded 10 miles, but nevertheless concluded that Massachusetts had not shown that the waters of Nantucket Sound were inland waters. Report of Special Master in Massachusetts Boundary Case, O. T. 1984, No. 35 Orig., pp. 69.2-70. We rejected the Commonwealth's claim to inland waters status for Nantucket Sound, framed in its exception to the Master's recommendation as an "ancient title" claim. Massachusetts Boundary Case, supra, at 105. If the case could have been resolved by reference to a simple 10-mile rule for all fringing islands, we need not have entertained such a claim.
D
In sum, we conclude that Alaska's entitlement to submerged lands along its Arctic Coast must be determined by applying the Convention's normal baseline principles. The Alabama and Mississippi Boundary Case does not foreclose this conclusion. The sources before the Master showed that, in its foreign relations, particularly in the period 1930 to 1949, the United States had advocated a rule under which objectionable pockets of high seas would be assimilated to a coastal nation's territorial sea. Such a rule would have been inconsistent with the maintenance of a 10-mile rule for fringing islands. The United States also advocated a rule for treating the waters of a strait leading to an inland sea as inland waters, but that rule is not equivalent to Alaska's simple 10-mile rule. Whether the waters of Stefansson Sound
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