In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Law of the Sea

19 Feb

Breaking news:  China has rejected arbitration under Annex VII of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea with the Philippines, dealing a heavy blow to the future of dispute settlement under UNCLOS (h/t China Law Prof Blog).  According to this China Daily report, "Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Ma Keqing had an appointment with officials from the Philippines' Foreign...

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16 Feb

As far as I can tell, the Chinese government continues to pretend as if the Philippines' Law of the Sea arbitration claim doesn't exist.  Articles like this one suggest the Philippines government continues to wait for some official or unofficial Chinese response.  The February 22 deadline for China to appoint an arbitrator is fast approaching. There are obviously bigger things going...

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16 Feb

I used to blog regularly about the Whale Wars, my name for the ongoing struggle between Japanese Whalers and those groups devoted to protecting whales.  But I stopped almost three years ago when Australia filed its case against Japan in the ICJ, since nothing important seems to have happened since then.  (Did we really need 22 months for written proceedings, when...

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27 Jan

For those of you wondering how seriously the Chinese media is taking the Philippines' arbitration claim against China over the South China Sea (there must be at least two of you out there), here is an illustrative cartoon from a Chinese newspaper, "JingChu Times", in Central China (although originally from another publication). Although one doesn't need to read Chinese to get...

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24 Jan

This article from the Global Times, a hawkish state-controlled newspaper in China, probably reflects a little bit of the official Chinese view on the Philippines UNCLOS claim. It also contains this troubling bit of analysis, from a Chinese scholar: The international court would not take the case without agreements from all parties involved, Dong Manyuan, a researcher at the China Institute...

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23 Jan

China's initial reaction to the Philippines' decision yesterday to file an arbitration claim has been to stick to its guns.  From the BBC: On Wednesday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei told journalists that China has "indisputable sovereignty over the South China Sea islands and adjacent waters, which has abundant historical and legal grounds". "The key and root of the dispute over...

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04 Jan

The Senkaku / Diaoyu islands, a series of rocky, uninhabited outcrops, are being claimed by Japan, China, and Taiwan, amongst others, both for historical reasons, and because of their potential value in anchoring sovereignty over natural resources like oil.   Some have predicted the dispute may be a military “flash point” in 2013. As Duncan noted last month, China made a partial submission...

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15 Dec

[Craig H. Allen is the Judson Falknor Professor of Law at the University of Washington in Seattle.] On December 15, 2012, one phase of the dispute between the Argentine Republic and the Republic of Ghana over the “seizure” of the Argentine frigate ARA Libertad while in a Ghanaian port came to an end, when the International Tribunal for the Law of...

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01 Dec

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...

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