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....
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...
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...
[John E. Noyes is the Roger J. Traynor Professor of Law at California Western School of Law.] I do not share Professor Rabkin’s pessimistic view of the prospect of international arbitration of law of the sea disputes under the Law of the Sea Convention. LOS Convention tribunals and the law of the sea experts who serve as judges and arbitrators have helped...
[Editors Note: We inadvertently posted the incomplete version of this post by Jeremy Rabkin this morning. This post has his response to Prof. Noyes earlier post today. Sorry for the confusion.] [Jeremy Rabkin is Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law.] Craig Allen has performed a valuable service by reporting the range of sea-related treaties where we have already committed to...
[John E. Noyes is the Roger J. Traynor Professor of Law at California Western School of Law.] My thanks again to Julian Ku for organizing this series on U.S. accession to the Law of the Sea Convention. I write to respond to Mr. Groves’s contention, based on U.S. experience in the Gulf of Mexico, that U.S. accession is not needed to further...
The Lotus Case is a pillar of international legal education. Generations of international law students have studied the PCIJ's opinion that Turkey had not acted in conflict with principles of international law in prosecuting a French national -- Lieutenant Demons -- for his role in the collision of a French steamer -- the S.S. Lotus -- with a Turkish vessel --...
[Craig H. Allen is the Judson Falknor Professor of Law at the University of Washington School of Law in Seattle.] Let me again thank Opinio Juris for hosting this exchange of views on the Law of the Sea Convention and Julian for his timely efforts in facilitating the exchange. The other four contributors each raise important considerations that warrant serious attention and...
[Steven Groves is a Bernard and Barbara Lomas Fellow at The Heritage Foundation in Washington D.C.] Many thanks to Julian Ku for inviting me to participate in this UNCLOS debate on one of my favorite websites. There is much I agree with in the posts of Professors Kraska, Noyes, and Allen. Professor Kraska correctly emphasizes the victory achieved by U.S. negotiators at UNCLOS...
[Jeremy Rabkin is Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law.] I entirely accept what James Kraska says about the benefits of the navigation rules in UNCLOS. But when Kraska and others say these rules are favorable, they mean the UNCLOS rules – as American officials would interpret them. Unfortunately, UNCLOS doesn’t leave it up to American officials to interpret...
I wanted to thank Professors Allen, Kraska, and Noyes for their contributions to our discussion on US ratification of UNCLOS. I've learned a great deal from their posts and I hope our readers have as well. I wanted to remind our readers, however, that we will hear from two leading scholars tomorrow -- Jeremy Rabkin and Steven Groves -- who...
[John E. Noyes is the Roger J. Traynor Professor of Law at California Western School of Law.] The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee is currently holding hearings on U.S. acceptance of the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea, as modified by the 1994 Part XI Implementation Agreement (the “LOS Convention”). The Committee favorably reported the LOS Convention in 2004...
