Cesare P.R. Romano

The Price of International Justice

In 2005, about

The Southern Bluefin Tuna Dispute: Hints of a World to Come . . . Like It or Not

420 million were spent on international courts and tribunals. About three fourths of this sum is for international criminal bodies alone. Of those

International Justice and Developing Countries (Continued): A Qualitative Analysis

420 million, about

The Rule of Prior Exhaustion of Domestic Remedies: Theory and Practice in International Human Rights Procedures

71 million was paid by the U.S. and

The Caspian and International Law: Like Oil and Water?

185 by the members of the European Union. This study aims to diagnose the financial health of the eleven major international courts and tribunals, focusing on the most urgent and significant difficulties faced by each to determine whether governments are allocating the necessary resources to ensure they are able to do their job properly and to determine where action needs to be taken. A series of more general policy-making considerations and recommendations aimed at helping international judicial bodies carry out their assigned mission follows.

The Proliferation of International Judicial Bodies: The Pieces of the Puzzle

On August 4, 2000, an ad hoc Arbitral Tribunal decided that it lacked the jurisdiction to hear the merits of the Southern Bluefin Tuna dispute involving Australia/ New Zealand and Japan. Several issues make the Southern Bluefin Tuna an extremely fertile case. This was the first time an arbitral tribunal was constituted under Part XV and Annex VII of UNCLOS. More importantly, the dispute brings forward several issues that are likely to be increasingly present in international litigation in future decades. First, the applicants had a choice of judicial fora in which to initiate proceedings. As the number of international judicial bodies continues to expand, similar issues will likely take up the concerns of practitioners and scholars alike. Second, the Southern Bluefin Tuna dispute is one of the few cases in which arbitration has been initiated unilaterally. Third, the dispute raised certain fundamental issues about the structure and institutional architecture of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). For instance, the Arbitral Tribunal considered whether the dispute settlement procedure contained in Part XV of UNCLOS prevailed over dispute settlement procedures in other sectorial and regional agreements, in which instances they prevailed, and to what extent. Finally, the Southern Bluefin Tuna dispute arose from the failure of a regional and sectorial fishing regime. It illustrates what happens when regimes fail to function and sheds some light on when and why they might crash.

A Taxonomy of International Rule of Law Institutions

This article is the second part of a study on the use of international judicial bodies by developing countries. The first part (International Justice and Developing Countries: A Quantitative Analysis, The Law and Practice of International Courts and Tribunals, Vol. 1, issue 2, 2002, ISSN 1569-1853, pp. 367-399), presenting the rationale of the study, the methodology and quantitative aspects, has been posted on SSRN as well. The aim of the second part of this study is to explore three key aspects of the resort to international judicial bodies by developing countries: access to judicial bodies; capacity to use them; and willingness to use them.

The International Judge: An Introduction to the Men and Women Who Decide the World's Cases

The rule of exhaustion of domestic remedies is arguably the most important admissibility requirement in international human rights procedure. It plays a pivotal role, as an interface between international and national legal systems. Starting from the practice of diplomatic protection and some very succinct statutory provisions, it evolved over time, by and large through jurisprudential elaboration. Because international human rights bodies insist in applying it flexibly—treating it more as a golden rule than a rule set in stone—and because the number of exceptions over time has grown considerably, there is significant doubt as to the exact scope of the rule and its exceptions. This uncertainty causes twofold confusion. It leads to an excessive amount of petitions being filed when they should not, but also causes many petitions to remain unfiled because of doubts as to their admissibility. It is argued here that it is time for authoritative codification of the sprawling jurisprudence on this rule.

The Manual on International Courts and Tribunals

The Caspian is a particularly frustrating predicament for international legal scholars. There are almost no treaties specifying which international legal regime has to be applied, and those few that exist are riddled by omissions or are plainly obsolete. Local custom is vague and extremely inconsistent. General international law does not shed much light on the matter either. However the problem is approached, it inevitably makes scholars wonder whether the Caspian is to be legally classified as a lake or a sea. But it does not seem to be either of them. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea does not apply to the Caspian. While customary international law of the sea can help to clam the nature of coastal states’ rights, by itself it cannot help to determine their spatial extension. Similarly, the analysis of the legal regime of international watercourses, or lakes, does not shed any much more light on where or how boundaries should be traced, nor on the extent of customary competencies of Caspian states within those spatial limits. It is not possible to wholesale the legal regime of enclosed seas and/or international lakes to the Caspian without due regard to its historical, geophysical and legal peculiarity. It is up to Caspian states to decide which legal regime the Caspian should have. Customary international law can supplement any agreement they might enter into, but by itself is not enough to reconcile the conflicting interests of the Caspian states and ensure the sustainable development of regional resources.