Introduction

This introductory chapter discusses the salience of territorial and maritime disputes, and the need to peacefully resolve these contentious disputes. It highlights similar and dissimilar features of territorial and maritime disputes, focusing on the role that international law plays in peaceful conflict management. These contentions entail the contesting of sovereignty rights and refusals to cede claimed territory or maritime areas. The chapter presents a short version of the theory of strategic selection and discusses the broader significance of the project, locating it within the existing international relations and international law scholarly literature. We introduce concepts crucial to our theory—choice-of-venue strategic selection and within-venue strategic selection. It emphasizes that territorial and maritime contentions involve politically and legally complex baskets of claims over borders, tracts of land, and maritime features.