Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback Edited Legal Collections Data

Franckx, Erik --- "The Arbitral Tribunal’s interpretation of paragraph 3 in Article 121: a first but important step forward" [2018] ELECD 974; in Jayakumar, S.; Koh, Tommy; Beckman, Robert; Davenport, Tara; Phan, D. Hao (eds), "The South China Sea Arbitration" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018) 154

Book Title: The South China Sea Arbitration

Editor(s): Jayakumar, S.; Koh, Tommy; Beckman, Robert; Davenport, Tara; Phan, D. Hao

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN: 9781788116268

Section: Chapter 7

Section Title: The Arbitral Tribunal’s interpretation of paragraph 3 in Article 121: a first but important step forward

Author(s): Franckx, Erik

Number of pages: 22

Abstract/Description:

International courts and tribunals have so far been persistent in refusing to give a specific content to the enigmatic Article 121, paragraph 3 of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, even though many occasions to do just that have presented themselves in the past. They were usually able to side-step this core issue of determining the exact legal nature of a particular maritime feature by relying on the law of maritime delimitation. The Arbitral Tribunal in the case initiated by the Philippines against China, however, was deprived of such an option as the People’s Republic of China had explicitly excluded delimitation matters from compulsory dispute settlement under the Convention. This chapter analyses this first, but important step forward in the clarification of Article 121, paragraph 3. Two specific elements of this clarification will be explored, namely the exact meaning of the term ‘rock’ and the grammatical conjunctions used in that paragraph.