UN General Assembly
1980

182. The recent law of the sea experience is instructive in two different respects. First, it has demonstrated that serious negotiations carried on within a sensible, practical framework can resolve difficult questions involving deep changes in the approach to issues where the willingness to do so exists. Secondly, it demonstrates in perhaps the most cogent possible way that no institution, no matter how well conceived or well administered, can function in the absence of agreement on such a fundamental question as adherence to the principle of consensus.