A recent meeting of the International Commission on the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT) has been heralded by environmental groups as a win for science in the management and conversation of scarce resources on the high seas.  One of the species within ICCAT’s jurisdiction is the Bluefin Tuna, a species that has famously declined, and some would claim, collapsed in the last 20 years.

Indeed, it was the precipitous drop off in Bluefin Tuna stocks two years ago that put ICCAT under the global magnifying glass.  When the consequences of ICCAT’s mismanagement of the stocks and its inability to sanction overfishing became apparent, some countries tried (unsuccessfully) to do an end run around ICCAT’s jurisdiction by listing the Bluefin as an endangered species under the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

Bluefin Tunas are a highly migratory and valuable fish that swim between national and international jurisdictions.   Because there are few restraints on high seas fishing under the principle of open access, it has been very difficult to create regimes that can effectively regulate or reallocate fishing rights.   The UN Law of the Sea Convention and the UN Fish Stocks Agreement create some limitations on the right to fish on the high seas but they do not create precise rules on how to allocate scares stocks.

Overfishing of highly migratory stocks has become a classic tragedy of the commons:  participants are driven to permit practices and even adopt strategies that will produce overfishing.    In 2010, a New York Times Magazine article entitled Tuna’s End asserted:

“Tuna [are] … the terminus of an idea: that the ocean is an endless resource where new fish can always be found. In the years to come we can treat tuna as a mile marker to zoom past on our way toward annihilating the wild ocean or as a stop sign that compels us to turn back and radically reconsider.”

The press release from the November Morocco meeting indicates that ICCAT may have turned a corner.  Catch limits were extended through 2013, and there is some evidence that the stocks are rebounding.    Moreover, ICCAT has undertaken a variety of new measures to curb Illegal and unregulated fishing.

Nonetheless, not all contracting parties are happy about this.  Reports in the Canadian press here indicate that some countries continue to push for higher quotas.

Ultimately, this issue raises the question of how best to incentivize states to stop overfishing.   One approach might be to promote substantive and strategic linkages.  In the context of fisheries, there are obvious links between fishing and trade, because seafood is now one of the most highly traded commodities.  A reduction in trade through a moratorium or a trade certification regime could be an effective response to overfishing.    However, to date, there have been no successful attempts to use Article XX of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) to restrict the capture of over-exploited species.  In the Tuna-Dolphin case, the GATT panel found that one country cannot take trade related action to implement its domestic laws. In the Shrimp -Turtle case, the WTO appellate body has been careful to emphasize that sovereign nations can adopt measures to protect endangered species, but its clear preference is that states address conservation through multilateral fora instead.  Ultimately trade must be part of the solution, whether under the WTO or as part of a separate agreement.  Yet it may be decades before countries agree that the international trade in fish should be limited to sustainable fish stocks caught in a sustainable manner.

Another approach might be to incentivize states to comply through financial reward.  One historic agreement illustrative of compliance through financial means is the 1911 Fur Seals convention, which secured the Pribilof herd of seals in the North Pacific Ocean.  Scott Barrett’s detailed account of the treaty in his book Environment and Statecraft demonstrates how the common property problem was rectified by reducing catch and distributing the gain through compensation.  Although there are some important differences between seals and bluefin tunas, in particular, fur seals are connected to territorial lands making them easier to regulate and enforce, there might be room to structure a new agreement for overexploited species where nations that overfish are compensated for reducing their fishing efforts.  The funds to compensate could be generated by vessel licensing schemes, certification and labeling schemes of the tunas themselves, or by taxing vessels directly.

Today is Argentina Day here at Opinio Juris! (OK, it is Bash-Argentina Day).  In any event, it is worth highlighting that while Argentina has escaped for now a NY federal court ruling that would have forced it to pay holdout creditors next month, it is also battling Ghana at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.  The request for provisional measure by Argentina and transcript of the oral arguments is here. I want to especially highlight the very impressive webcast function on the Court’s website, which provides a great chance for those of us who don’t live in Hamburg to see oral argument at ITLOS. I know I am already on the record being very skeptical of Argentina’s argument in ITLOS, but the oral presentation by Ghana’s attorney Phillippe Sands has got to make Argentina worry.  His whole argument in a nutshell: UNCLOS does not regulate a sovereign’s actions in its internal waters (e.g. port). UNCLOS does regulate some actions in a country’s territorial seas. This seems pretty solid, but I am far from a UNCLOS expert. I welcome readers’ comments.  Decision forthcoming on December 15th!

Under India’s presidency, the UN Security Council debated the global phenomenon of maritime piracy on November 19.  The outcome was a presidential statement, not a resolution.  Although not binding, it highlights future trends in the Security Council’s approach to piracy.   Unlike prior Security Council actions that have been region specific, Monday’s debate reflects the global dimensions of the issue including references to the spike in attacks off the oil rich coast of the Gulf of Guinea.

The Security Council’s involvement in matters of piracy goes back several years now, when piracy off the coast of Somalia became a major international problem.  Under Security Council resolution 1816, the Council famously authorized states to enter the territorial waters of Somalia, limiting the sovereignty of Somalia with regards to this crime that historically was linked to the high seas.   Since then, the Council has authorized limited incursions onto land, and has generally been a prime mover on legal approaches to the problem, although always circumscribing its resolutions to the situation at hand.  Resolution 1816, for example, is carefully worded to apply only to Somalia, and the resolution explicitly notes it is not indicative of a new customary international rule.  Another resolution in which the Security Council asserted a decidedly legal approach was Resolution 2020, which highlights the link between attacks at sea and conspiracies and criminal networks on land, and urges states to establish anti-piracy courts.

The November 19 debate is notable for a few reasons.  First, the statement encouraged the development of new rules of deployment for private security contractors.  It appears that the IMO is leading the charge in this regard, and some interesting recommendations can be found on its website.  Second, there was some concern prior to the debate about whether to include a reference to illegal fishing and dumping in the statement.  The presidential statement does not, in the end, refer to these related issues although several countries highlighted them in their speeches.  Third, Argentina took issue with the Security Council’s assertion of jurisdiction.   The representative said that “unless a situation had engendered Council action under Chapter VII for other reasons, such as the situation in Somalia, piracy was not under the competence of the body; it was, rather under the framework of the Convention on the Law of the Sea.”

I have been observing the Security Council’s response to piracy for several years now, and I have been repeatedly surprised by the heavy overlay of law in its resolutions on this topic.  Indeed, in my opinion, the piracy resolutions are distinctive in their multiple concrete references to laws and legal institutions.  For example, one sees references to the Djibouti code of conduct on human rights, anti-piracy courts, methods to strengthen domestic criminal laws, and of course, to the overarching legal framework created by UNCLOS and SUA.  This preambular paragraph from Resolution 2020 illustrates the Security Council’s legalistic approach:

 “Recognizing the need to investigate and prosecute not only suspects captured at sea, but also anyone who incites or intentionally facilitates piracy operations, including key figures of criminal networks involved in piracy who illicitly plan, organize, facilitate, or finance and profit from such attacks and reiterating its concern over a large number of persons suspected of piracy having to be released without facing justice, reaffirming that the failure to prosecute persons responsible for acts of piracy and armed robbery at sea off the coast of Somalia undermines anti-piracy efforts of the international community and being determined to create conditions to ensure that pirates are held accountable…”

I wonder whether others see the Security Council as exercising a particularly overt legal role in the realm of piracy as well, even if the Council is attempting to curb the impression its resolutions are precedent setting.   And I wonder whether the Security Council’s legal bid in the field has prompted countries like Argentina to retaliate by opposing general Security Council jurisdiction over matters of piracy.

This analysis from Professor Matthew Happold offers very good reasons to doubt that Argentina can validly invoke the jurisdiction of the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea in its dispute with Ghana. Putting aside Argentina’s argument that it did not (or could not) waive its warship’s immunity, Professor Happold points out that it is far from clear that this dispute implicates any issue involving the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The key is UNCLOS Art. 32:

With such exceptions as are contained in subsection A and in articles 30 and 31, nothing in this Convention affects the immunities of warships and other government ships operated for non-commercial purposes.

The most logical reading of this language here is that the legal issue between Ghana and Argentina: is there immunity for the warship? — is not a UNCLOS question.  And nothing in Argentina’s request for provisional measures makes me think that it is should be thought of as a UNCLOS question.

As Professor Happold notes:

Subsection A of Section 3 of Part II of UNCLOs deals with the rules applying to all ships concerning innocent passage in the territorial sea.  Articles 30 and 31 respectively cover non-compliance with warships of the laws and regulations of a coastal State concerning passage through the territorial sea, and flag State responsibility for any loss or damage to a coastal State resulting from the non-compliance by warships with the laws and regulations of the coastal State concerning passage through the territorial sea.  Put simply, therefore, the Convention states that it says nothing about the immunities of warships in the territorial sea (Article 32 falling within Part II of UNCLOs dealing with the legal regime of the territorial sea – despite the provision’s blanket terms another provision does exist (Article 95) concerning the immunities of warships on the high seas), still less about the immunities of warships in internal waters (which no provision of UNCLOs covers), leaving the matter to be dealt with elsewhere.

In any event, Professor Happold’s whole post is worth considering.

Argentina has opened a new front in its battle with Ghana over a local court order detaining its naval training ship ARA Libertad until Argentina posts a bond for payment on its defaulted sovereign debt.  It is now threatening to sue Ghana in the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, November 13th, all the deadlines expire for Ghana’s government to lift the embargo, recognizing the Convention on the Law of the Sea,” Argentine Foreign Minister Hector Timerman told reporters in Buenos Aires on Monday.

He said if Ghana did not release the ship, Argentina would be able to take its case to the Hamburg-based International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea the following day.

I suppose the issue will be whether naval vessels have an absolute immunity for a domestic court, even when the sovereign in question (Argentina) has expressly waived its immunity defenses.  I think the law here is far from clear, and that Argentina’s case is far from strong.  Here is Article 32 of the Law of the Sea.

With such exceptions as are contained in subsection A and in articles 30 and 31, nothing in this Convention affects the immunities of warships and other government ships operated for non-commercial purposes.

That’s all very well as it goes, but it doesn’t answer the question. No doubt there is immunity for warships under customary international law, but there seems little reason to doubt that this immunity can be waived (as Argentina almost certainly did here). Argentina will have to convince ITLOS that customary international law confers an unwaivable immunity to warships. I don’t know what authority it has for that proposition (my own brief review has found none) but it will be interesting to see if they are able to come up with anything.  Maybe someone out there can do the work for ITLOS?

Earlier this week, Harold Koh gave a speech.  And it wasn’t about conflicts, drones, or cyberwar, topics that have dominated the attention of international lawyers in recent years.  Rather, Koh’s speech was a meditation on the processes of international law-making that confront the State Department on a daily basis.  It was, simply put, a survey of the current international legal landscape from the U.S. perspective.

Koh reviewed the formal U.S. treaty-making process, citing past victories like the New START Treaty and the Obama Administration’s continued push for Senate advice and consent to the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the more recent Disabilities Convention.  There was also a cogent defense of the use of congressional executive agreements, with reference to controversies over the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (or ACTA), where frankly I find myself aligned with the federal government in not seeing what the fuss is all about (or, rather, if there’s a fuss, it’s one so fundamental as to put into doubt two centuries of Congressional pre-approval of U.S. treaty-making).

Beyond this survey of formal international lawmaking, Koh also emphasized compliance, including a nod to his prior scholarly work (and the C-175 process, on which I spent a good deal of my own time at the State Department):

In my academic work, I have described a pervasive phenomenon in international affairs that I call “transnational legal process:” that international law is primarily enforced not by coercion, but by a process of internalized compliance. Nations tend to obey international law, because their government bureaucracies adopt standard operating procedures and other internal mechanisms that foster default patterns of habitual compliance with international legal rules. When I became Legal Adviser, I found that this is even truer than I thought. For example, most people are unaware of the so-called “C-175” process, named after a 1955 State Department Circular setting out a standardized procedure for concluding international agreements. The few academics who have ever noticed that process often assume it is nothing more than a rubber stamp. But having now seen it from the inside, I can tell you that the process is exhaustive and designed to ensure that all proposed U.S. international agreements — even if concluded by a different agency — are subject to a rigorous legal and policy review by the State Department before an any agreement is negotiated and concluded. Through this process, the State Department plays the same kind of clearinghouse role with respect to international agreements that OMB plays with regard to federal regulations. The C-175 process ensures not only that we have the legal authority to conclude the agreement in question, but also that every agency’s lawyers fully understand the nature of the domestic and international legal obligations we will undertake, so that we can accurately evaluate whether the United States will be able to comply with its new international legal obligations.

 

On the subject of compliance, Koh highlighted that the Administration has not yet given up on complying with the ICJ’s Avena judgment. And in terms of customary international law (CIL), Koh reiterated the U.S. view that major parts of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties and the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea now codify CIL.

But, Koh’s talk also went well beyond the “formal” sources of international law, exploring the range of alternatives to treaty-making.  He discussed U.S. political commitments, including cooperative arrangements with the Arab League, the Copenhagen Accords, and the recent Washington Communique on nuclear security.  Koh dubbed these instruments as “layered cooperation”:

In any given area of international cooperation, the choice between international agreements and non-legal alternatives is not binary. Instead, the legal and the non-legal understandings are layered, and operate on different levels. Take for example the Arctic Council, a group of eight Arctic States — Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States — which has emerged as an impressive example of a non-legal mechanism to facilitate sustainable development and international cooperation in the Arctic. The cooperation that takes place within the Arctic Council — generally through non-binding means — is layered on top of a legal backdrop of the Law of the Sea Convention, and the customary international law it reflects, which answer important questions about sovereign rights and jurisdiction in the Arctic. Now notice that the Council is not a formal international organization; it was not set up by an international agreement, and the majority of its work is not legally binding. But this has not detracted from — and has probably even enhanced — its success in facilitating robust international cooperation among the Arctic States at all levels, ranging from foreign ministers to bench scientists.

Koh’s speech also emphasized the increasing important role assigned in international lawmaking to non-State actors.  He ended, moreover, on a high note:

Make no mistake: this is not your grandfather’s international law, a Westphalian top-down process of treatymaking where international legal rules are negotiated at formal treaty conferences, to be handed down for domestic implementation in a top-down way. Instead, it is a classic tale of what I have long called “transnational legal process,” the dynamic interaction of private and public actors in a variety of national and international fora to generate norms and construct national and global interests. The story is neither simple nor static. Twenty-first century international lawmaking has become a swirling interactive process whereby norms get “uploaded” from one country into the international system, and then “downloaded” elsewhere into another country’s laws or even a private actor’s internal rules.

Now I am sure that Hugo Grotius had it good in his time. But believe me: there has never been a more challenging and exciting time to be an international lawyer or an international lawmaker. I have been lucky to spend my whole career steeped in this heady environment as a lawyer, scholar, advocate and public official. To be sure, there will always be challenges. But still, I find no belief more contagious than the simple, idealistic conviction, shared by so many, that even in a new millennium, it is still possible to aspire to help build a vibrant world order based on law.

For those who want to see the whole speech — check it out here — it’s worth the read.

[UPDATE:  Marty Lederman writes in with a link to a video of the speech for those interested in watching it.]

The Japanese Prime Minister made clear in remarks yesterday that he has no intention of proposing international arbitration to settle or mediate the ongoing Senkaku/Diaoyu Island dispute with China.  Indeed, China’s government-controlled English language paper, noted the inconsistency of Japan’s position given its willingness to send its similar dispute with South Korea to the ICJ. (A point I noted here).

Noda also said on Monday that Japan has no intention to use the International Court of Justice to solve tensions with China over islands in the East China Sea. “We are not considering using the ICJ”, and there is no doubt the islands are an integral part of Japanese territory both internationally and historically, he said.

However, China rejected Japan’s claim of sovereignty over the islands which are known as the Diaoyu Dao and its affiliated islets in China. China said it enjoys indisputable sovereignty over the islands. Noda’s government has been embroiled in territorial spats with China and South Korea in recent months, but his remarks suggest that Japan will deal with the two neighbors in a different manner.

In August, the Japanese government formally proposed to South Korea that the two countries jointly seek a resolution at the ICJ in The Hague to their dispute over a group of sparsely inhabited islands controlled by Seoul but claimed by Tokyo.

Does this suggest China might be open to such an arrangement? Or are they just needling him?

It is a draft platform, but these parts of the 2012 GOP Platform are certainly interesting. It appears to have strong language in favor of “American Exceptionalism” and American sovereignty.

Under our Constitution, treaties become the law of the land. So it is all the more important that the Congress — the senate through its ratifying power and the House through its appropriating power — shall reject agreements whose long-range impact on the American family is ominous or unclear. These include the U.N. Convention on Women’s Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty as well as the various declarations from the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development. Because of our concern for American sovereignty, domestic management of our fisheries, and our country’s long-term energy needs, we have deep reservations about the regulatory, legal, and tax regimes inherent in the Law of the Sea Treaty and congratulate Senate Republicans for blocking its ratification. We strongly reject the U.N. Agenda 21 as erosive of American sovereignty, and we oppose any form of U.N. Global Tax.

Unlike Josh Keating, I don’t read this platform as “black helicopter” stuff.  I think there are reasonable policy arguments against all of the above treaties, especially UNCLOS.  I do agree, though, that this might herald an important policy shift. A majority of the GOP has previously supported US ratification of UNCLOS, but it looks like UNCLOS opposition is now going to be in the GOP mainstream.  And that means that US ratification of UNCLOS looks even more unlikely.

While I am at it, I might as well flog my most recent piece on China’s relationship with international tribunals and international adjudication more generally.  This study, which attempts to document all of China’s treaties that include compulsory dispute resolution clauses (excepting bilateral investment treaties), concludes that China is unlikely to become a strong supporter and participant in mechanisms of international adjudication.  Like the United States, China is consistently wary and cautious about such international mechanisms. The abstract is below:

Traditionally, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has shunned participation in international adjudication, preferring to settle all disputes through direct negotiations. But in the past two decades, this wholly negative approach to international courts and arbitration tribunals has begun to shift. In addition to the acceptance and active participation in the Dispute Settlement Body of the World Trade Organization, the PRC has also accepted limited jurisdiction for arbitration under the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. Despite this shift, the PRC still follows a policy of strictly limiting its exposure to international adjudicatory mechanisms. This strategy, which is similar to that practiced by the United States, suggests that international adjudication faces difficult prospects in the long term.

It’s official. US ratification of UNCLOS is dead (at least for this year).  And, perhaps more significantly, the treaty was sunk by two senators, Robert Portman and Kelly Ayotte, both of whom appear to be on Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential short list.  Their announcements, in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, brings the number of announced U.S. Senators opposing US ratification to 34.  This effectively kills UNCLOS for this Congress.

The joint letter by Senators Portman and Ayotte cites most of the same objections set forth ably by Jeremy Rabkin and Steve Groves last month here at Opinio Juris.  The letter is skeptical of the fairness of the system of international dispute resolution set out by UNCLOS and worried about litigation under the ITLOS system or even in the ATS context. It is also skeptical of the ability of the Authority to fairly set forth rules and to administer the resources it will control.

The letter does throw in an argument that I’ve made in other contexts (and cites me in a footnote!): that the Seabed Disputes Chamber of the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea may have unconstitutionally broad judicial powers to require enforcement of its judgments in US domestic courts.

The letter concedes, however, that there are substantial benefits of joining UNCLOS to the US Navy and to US commercial interests in exploiting undersea natural resources. But as to the first, it argues that the US government and navy can protect its navigation rights better than (or at least as well as) the UNCLOS system.  Intriguingly, the letter also points that commercial undersea development can still be protected via bilateral agreements, which has been done in the past (something Steve Groves has suggested).

I am still not totally sold on the practicability of this approach, but I do think that the next administration, whomever is elected, should explore such bilateral alternatives.  UNCLOS may be a great idea, but it is not going to be ratified by the US Senate in the foreseeable future. Time for oil and natural resources interests in the US to get a Plan B.

Interesting letter to the editor at the WSJ, defending China’s claim to the disputed island/shoal/reef in the South China Seas. It is a good preview of China’s international law argument as well as its view that UNCLOS is largely irrelevant to the dispute.

To assert that China “invented” history is a result of ignorance of history. China acquired sovereignty over Huangyan Island through discovery of and presence on the island before anyone else. Hundreds of years of jurisdiction has consolidated China’s sovereignty over the island. Historic and legal evidences are explicit, clear, complete and thorough, as proved by official documents, local chronicles and official maps throughout Chinese history. China’s sovereignty over Huangyan Island has long been recognized and respected by the international community and had not been disputed by the Philippines. On the contrary, the Philippine claim over the island has never been recognized by any other country.

…

We doubt if the author of the article really understands the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. It, in its preamble, clearly states that its purpose is to establish, with due regard for the sovereignty of all states, a legal order for the seas and oceans. The convention does not contain any provision that concerns alteration of land territory of any country or empower any country to extend its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) to another country’s territory. The convention is by no means a law that determines territorial ownership. The Philippines has made territorial claims on the ground of “Huangyan Island is within the Philippines’ EEZ, which, as per the U.N. Law of the Sea Convention, extends 200 nautical miles off the coast” represents abuse and misinterpretation of the convention based on its unilateral interests.

This is actually a similar argument to the kind of argument the UK is making over the Malvinas/Falkland.  It is not about UNCLOS, but sovereignty, and sovereignty is largely a question of historical research.  I still don’t buy it, but it is a pretty respectable argument.

Today, I hear there is going to be some decision from the U.S. Supreme Court on health care, or something.  But there is something almost as cool going on down at the other end of the Mall: Sen. John Kerry’s latest effort to win Senate advice and consent for the U.N. Convention for the Law of the Sea (and the job as the next U.S. Secretary of State) by holding a SFRC hearing.

Today, the topic is going to be money, not sovereignty or national security. I think this is by far the strongest argument that treaty proponents have in their favor. As we learned last week during the exchange between Steve Groves and John Noyes, there is a real difference of opinion on whether the UNCLOS provisions regulating the development of undersea resources are necessary or desirable. As a refresher, here is Steve’s argument on this point: