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The “What About Me?” Question in ICJ Proceedings On Compensation And Maritime Delimitation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2023

Massimo Lando
Massimo Lando*
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor, School of Law, City University of Hong Kong; Global Fellow, Centre for International Law, National University of Singapore.
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Extract

This brief contribution contains some reflections on the relevance of the “what about me?” question in proceedings on compensation and maritime delimitation. The focus is on disputes at the International Court of Justice (ICJ or Court). My argument is that, as things currently stand at the ICJ, the Court is ill-equipped to address the “what about me?” question and that, as a result, ICJ proceedings remain very much state-centric. This view likely is not surprising because the Court was conceived, since its origins in the 1920s, as an interstate judicial organ. Other dispute settlement institutions have developed since then to bring dispute settlement closer to individuals, such as regional human rights courts and arbitral tribunals in the investor-state context. However, this situation does not mean that the ICJ should not take into account individuals in deciding disputes submitted to its jurisdiction. What this situation does mean is that one would need to rethink some procedural aspects of ICJ dispute settlement, which I will discuss in relation to compensation, and parts of the ICJ's jurisprudence, which I will discuss in relation to maritime delimitation.

Type
Territory, Tribe, and Trade: The Symbiotic Relations between State and Individuals in State-State Dispute Settlement
Information
Proceedings of the ASIL Annual Meeting , Volume 116 , 2022 , pp. 57 - 59
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The American Society of International Law

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References

1 Armed Activities on the Territory of the Congo (Dem Rep. Congo v. Uganda), Merits, Judgment, 2005 ICJ Rep. 168 (Dec. 19).

2 Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Bosn. v. Serb.), Merits, Judgment, 2007 ICJ Rep. 43, para. 462 (Feb. 26); see Vladyslav Lanovoy, Causation in the Law of State Responsibility, 90 Brit. Y.B. Int'l L. (forthcoming 2022) (advance access at https://academic.oup.com/bybil/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/bybil/brab008/6516063?redirectedFrom=fulltext).

3 Massimo Lando, Maritime Delimitation as a Judicial Process 195–201 (2019).

4 Maritime Delimitation Between Greenland and Jan Mayen (Den. v. Nor.), Judgment, 1993 ICJ Rep. 38, paras. 75–76 (June 14).