Apropos of Kevin's recent posts, Professor George Bisharat of UC Hastings Law School takes to the NYT op-ed pages to call for Palestine to join the ICC and seek investigation of Israel's actions in the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinians’ first attempt to join the I.C.C. was thwarted last April when the court’s chief prosecutor at the time, Luis Moreno-Ocampo,...
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...
[I know that what this blog needs is yet another post on the China-Philippines UNCLOS Arbitration! We aim to please!] Steve Groves of Heritage asks in the comments to my prior post: What happens if China simply refuses to show up at the arbitration? Can an arbitral tribunal even be formed to rule on jurisdiction? This is something that I've wondered too, and...
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...
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...
In a potentially huge development, the Government of the Philippines announced earlier today that it has filed for arbitration with China under the UN Convention for the Law of the Sea. The Philippines' claim places China's controversial sovereignty claim over the South China Sea (see right) squarely before an international arbitral tribunal convened under Article 287 of UNCLOS. According to the...
I am delighted to announce that Thomas Graham, the U.S. Member of the World Trade Organization's Appellate Body, will be giving the Shapiro Lecture at Hofstra entitled "It Sure Looks Different from the Inside: Deciding International Disputes at the WTO." Graham has been an observer and a participant in the international trade law system since the 1970s as a USTR attorney,...
[Başak Çalı is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Human Rights at the University College London] This post is the first in a series of three. The relationship between the highest domestic courts and the European Court of Human Rights has been subject to much debate in the past ten years in Europe. Some of this debate focuses on the backlash against the...
[Jelia Sane is studying for the English Bar at City University, London. She holds an LLM in Public International Law from University College London and has previously interned at the ICC, the Centre for Justice and International Law, and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia.] The unanimous acquittal and subsequent release of Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui by Trial Chamber II of the International Criminal...
[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...
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...
I have a Forbes.com op-ed today providing a fuller version of my critique of Argentina's legal arguments over the ARA Libertad. (It's worth noting that Argentina is actually heading toward yet another financial crisis spurred by a recent New York court decision, which I didn't have time to incorporate into this piece.) Last month, a court in Ghana detained the ARA Libertad, an Argentine...
