International Court of Justice: Order in Case Concerning the Continental Shelf

1980 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 964-964
1981 ◽  
Vol 75 (4) ◽  
pp. 903-909 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip C. Jessup

For the first time the International Court of Justice has squarely faced and ruled upon the right of a third state to intervene in a case to which two other states are parties. The litigation was the Case Concerning the Continental Shelf (Tunisia/Libyan Arab Jamahiriya), Application of Malta for Permission to Intervene, Judgment of April 14, 1981. The Court unanimously denied permission to intervene, but three judges appended separate opinions which contain matters of considerable interest.


2013 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
David P. Riesenberg

In 2012, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) rendered its fourth judgment in Nicaragua v. Colombia. The case was first initiated by Nicaragua under the Bogotá Pact in 2001. The fourth judgment affirmed Colombia’s territorial sovereignty over a group of islands in the western Caribbean Sea and delimited a boundary between the two states’ zones of maritime jurisdiction. Even after eleven years of complicated proceedings, however, the parties’ conflicting claims are not yet completely resolved. The ICJ explicitly declined to address Nicaragua’s potential entitlement to the continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles from its coastal baselines, including the portion of Nicaragua’s ‘‘outer’’ continental shelf that allegedly overlaps with Colombia’s maritime entitlements. For the foreseeable future, this aspect of the controversy will likely remain unresolved. One week after the ICJ rendered its fourth judgment, Colombia withdrew from the Bogotá Pact and thereby terminated its consent to the ICJ’s jurisdiction.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niccolo Ridi

This article considers the approach to the res judicata principle taken by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and, specifically, its application in its 2016 judgment on preliminary objections in the latest dispute between Nicaragua and Colombia. The judgment joins the small number of ICJ decisions in which the Court was evenly split, an altogether rare situation, which, at the time of the decision, had not occurred since the Nuclear Weapons Avisory Opinion. Intriguingly, such a fracture seems to have been prompted by differences over the operation of a procedural principle the understanding of which is comparatively uncontroversial. Upon closer analysis, however, the disagreement reveals that more significant questions were at stake, with members of the minority issuing a vocal joint dissent and several individual declarations. This study will move in three parts: first, it will provide an overview of the nature and purpose of the principle of res judicata, its application in international adjudication, and its use by the ICJ; second, it will analyse the Court’s reading of the principle in the case at issue; third, it will expose the broader implications of one such approach for the role and authority of the World Court and the international judiciary.


1979 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. D. Blecher

The fons et origo of much law concerning the continental shelf, the Truman Proclamation of September 28, 1945, declared that in cases where the continental shelf off the coast of the United States extended to the shores of another state or was shared with an adjacent state, the boundary should be determined by the United States and the state concerned “in accordance with equitable principles.” A number of subsequent declarations, such as those of Saudi Arabia and the various coastal sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula, have contained similar statements. In the North Sea Continental Shelf case the International Court of Justice, having found the delimitation provisions of the 1958 Geneva Convention on the Continental Shelf to be inapplicable as between the parties, began its exposition of the basic rules and principles to be applied as follows: “(1) delimitation is to be effected by agreement in accordance with equitable principles.” Although the 1958 Geneva Convention did not explicitly require delimitation to be made in accordance with equitable principles, it has been interpreted as requiring such delimitations. Article 83, paragraph 1 of the Informal Composite Negotiating Text of the Third United Nations Law of the Sea Conference expressly states that the delimitation of the continental shelf between adjacent or opposite states shall be effected by agreement in accordance with equitable principles. Whether or not Article 83, paragraph 1 is eventually accepted, it would seem that notions of equity are likely to continue to play an important part in the determination of continental shelf boundaries.


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