After the second world war, the International Court of Justice decided two contentious cases: Corfu Channel (1949), which addressed straits used for international navigation; and Fisheries (1951), which considered baselines marking the start of the territorial sea. Both were initiated by the United Kingdom after two other states, Albania and Norway respectively, tried to prevent British vessels from operating without permission in their coastal waters - warships in one case, trawlers in the other. Taken together, the decisions set out the parameters of the modern approach to the law of the sea: preserving the naval powers’ traditional freedoms of navigation while recognising the coastal states’ claims to resources in the waters off their coasts.