The Status of Crimea and the Sea of Azov as a Jurisdictional Hurdle in Ukraine v. Russia

On 21 February 2020, the arbitral tribunal constituted under Annex vii of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (unclos) in the Dispute Concerning Coastal State Rights in the Black Sea, Sea of Azov, and Kerch Strait (Ukraine v. the Russian Federation) rendered its award concerning preliminary objections. This comment focuses on the arbitral tribunal’s findings concerning Russia’s two most important and far-reaching objections, both of which concern jurisdiction ratione materiae. First, it argues that the arbitral tribunal convincingly declined jurisdiction over those of Ukraine’s claims, which would have required the arbitral tribunal to decide the dispute between Ukraine and Russia concerning sovereignty over Crimea. Second, this comment analyzes the arbitral tribunal’s conclusion that the parties’ dispute concerning the status of the Sea of Azov and Kerch Strait was not of an exclusively preliminary character and must, therefore, be reserved for the proceedings on the merits.

The Image of Russia in the Spanish Historical Diplomatic Discourse of the Second Half of the 18th Century: Frame Modelling

Frame modelling has been widely used to analyse various types of discourse; however, the historical and diplomatic discourse remained beyond the purview of special studies until recently. This paper aimed to consider the linguopragmatic and ontological characteristics of the image of Russia in the Spanish historical and diplomatic discourse of the second half of the 18th century from the perspective of frame modelling. An interdisciplinary approach was applied, including the methods of comparative, lexicosemantic, discourse, and frame analysis. The frame “Russia” modelled by the author on the basis of the prototypical frame “state” represents linguistic units that actualize the image of Russia in the discourse under study as well as changes in this image that occurred during the given historical period. The material included 84 historical documents from Spanish archives, namely, official diplomatic correspondence dating back to the period of exploration of the New World by Russia and Spain and consolidation of their state rights on this territory. The studied correspondence, consisting of reports of Spanish envoys to Russia, letters of governors of New Spain and diaries of Spanish seafarers, is one of the main sources of the formation of the image of Russia as part of the Spanish linguistic worldview of the 18th century. Based on the semantic, discourse and frame analysis of Spanish diplomatic documents of the second half of the 18th century, it is concluded that the image of Russia in the Spanish linguistic worldview is rather ambiguous: Russia is portrayed as a large empire with rich land and human resources planning expansion into North America, while having corrupt officials and an uncivilized indigenous population in Eastern Siberia. The results of this study can be of interest to linguists, historians and diplomatic officials.

Occupancy, Land Rights and the Algonquin Anishinaabeg

This article is about Indigenous territorial title and land rights, and specifically those of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg Nation. In 1983, the Algonquins of Pikwàkanagàn, residing in the province of Ontario, petitioned the Crown to recognize Algonquin territorial title and rights to 36,000 square kilometres of their natal homelands in the Ottawa River watershed. With negotiations beginning in the early 1990s, an Agreement-in-Principle was developed and ratified in 2016, the penultimate step to the largest modern treaty in Ontario's history. In this article, we examine the argument for moral rights to territory, not in terms of the Canadian or international legal order, nor even through examining the documents and voice of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg, but through the lens of an argument that has been advanced as the basis of the international territorial rights of states. We argue that the justifications for state rights territory—grounded in the considerations that ensue from an analysis of occupancy groups—provides a stronger claim to territorial jurisdiction and title in the case of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg Nation than the competing claim by the Canadian state.

The Impact of Bilateral Investment Treaties on FDI Inflows Into India: Some Empirical Results

After a run of adverse investor-state dispute settlements, India has recently denounced all its erstwhile investment treaties. New investment treaties need to be negotiated on the basis of a new Model Treaty that privilege state rights over investor rights. We study the impact of bilateral investment treaties on foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows into India before the denunciation with the intent of inferring the consequences of changing the system. Our work captures the effects of international investment agreements on FDI inflows specifically into India. We construct an empirical model drawing on the Gravity Model, and estimate parameters using generalised method of moments. The results show that while the individual signing of bilateral investment treaties does not influence the inflow of FDI, the effect of the cumulative bilateral investment treaties signed is statistically very significant—suggesting that the spill over effect of signing a series of bilateral investment treaties are important, signalling a regime of overall protection to investors. The importance of institutional variables in influencing FDI tells us that overall participation in a system governed by international investor agreements influenced the inflow of FDI positively and therefore recent policy changes should be viewed with caution. JEL Codes: F21, F23, F550, F63, K33, O19, C22, C29

Dispute Settlement in the Law of the Sea: Survey for 2020

This is the latest in a series of annual surveys in this Journal reviewing dispute settlement in the law of the sea, both under Part XV of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and outside the framework of the Convention. It covers developments during 2020. The most significant developments were awards by the arbitral tribunals in the Enrica Lexie and Coastal State Rights cases.