Tag: Jurisdiction

Opportunity Lost: The ECtHR’s Restrictive Approach Re-ignites Vacuum between Human Rights and Humanitarian Law – Alessandro Silvestri

Editors Analysis, Articles

In Georgia v Russia (II), the European Court of Human Rights (‘ECtHR’ or ‘Court’) was asked to decide on numerous alleged breaches of human rights by the Russian Federation (‘Russia’) during a five-day armed conflict between Georgia and Russia. Despite the legal trend favouring the complementarity between International Human Rights Law (‘IHRL’) and International Humanitarian Law (‘IHL’), the Court ultimately held that Russia lacked jurisdiction over extraterritorial breaches of human rights under art 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights (‘ECHR’ or ‘Convention’), signalling a regrettable turnaround from recent case-law.

The ECtHR was handed the perfect opportunity to move past, as rightly underscored by Judge Chanturia, the legally ‘lifeless’ Bankovićdecision and enrich the interplay between IHRL and IHL in Georgia v Russia (II),but ultimately failed to do so. 

For legal purposes, the events under scrutiny may be divided in two parts. The first part concerned the armed conflict between Georgia and Russia, with South Ossetians and Abkhaz forces also playing an important role. Hostilities started on the night of 7 to 8 August 2008 and lasted for about five days, resulting in significant losses, including an alarming number of civilian casualties. Secondly, following a ceasefire, Georgia submitted that Russia perpetrated a number of human rights abuses, including the killings and displacement of civilians, the degrading treatment of civilians and prisoners of war, lootings and destruction of civilian objects, which would constitute significant violations of the ECHR. The scope of this written work is to assess the ECtHR’s approach to the first part and assess whether said approach adequately grasped the interplay between IHRL and IHL, as the latter comprises the body of international law applicable to armed conflicts.

The interplay between IHRL and IHL has been subject to much scrutiny in international law. It is internationally recognised that the two bodies of international law are mutually complementary, thus meaning that the protection of certain human rights, in particular, as the International Court of Justice in its Advisory Opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons argued at § 25, the ‘right not arbitrarily to be deprived of one’s life’, does not cease during armed conflict (see also Orakhelashvili and the ICTY in Prosecutor v Kunarac et al§ 467). On the other hand, the ‘intricate legal issues of interplay that sometimes arise’ have arguably posed practical challenges in the way the interplay is to be understood, such as matters of derogation, jurisdiction, discretion, accountability, etc. (see also Bethlehem, 180– 82). The opportunity Georgia v Russia (II) presented for furthering the interpretation of applicable human rights norms in situations of armed conflict was therefore invaluable.

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International jurisprudence, great powers and the UN – Andrew Blackie

Editors Analysis, Articles, Opinion

On 7 July 2016, during a visit to Beijing, United Nations (“UN”) the then Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Foreign Minister Wang Yi. The timing was unfortunate, owing to the imminent ruling of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (“UNCLOS”) Arbitral Tribunal on the South China Sea, handed down less than a week later. 

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Farewell to buried treasure: Claiming proprietary rights under international law in Ure v Commonwealth — Timothy Gorton

Editors Analysis, Articles, Opinion

Introduction

Whilst many dream of claiming their own island slice of paradise, few would have ever done so with the same verve as Alexander Francis Ure. In 1970, Ure claimed the islands of Elizabeth and Middleton Reefs — some 80 miles north of Lord Howe Island — in order to exploit the substantial hydrocarbon deposits he believed to lie beneath.

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Reforming Jurisdiction – Dan Svantesson

Editors Articles

In many ways, the territoriality principle represents the jurisprudential core of our current thinking on jurisdiction in both public and private international law. However, its flaws and inadequacies are increasingly obvious and its application is particularly problematic in relation to the online environment. Further, there is an increasing appreciation that, in a globalised world, State responsibilities do not end at States’ territorial borders. This is particularly clear in areas such as human rights law, environmental law and space law.

A recent symposium issue of the American Journal of International Law Unbound explores a proposal I have put forward, aimed at reforming our thinking on jurisdiction. Put succinctly, my proposition is that the proper jurisprudential core of jurisdiction in both public and private international law can be summarised in the following principles:

In the absence of an obligation under international law to exercise jurisdiction, a State may only exercise jurisdiction where:

  1. there is a substantial connection between the matter and the State seeking to exercise jurisdiction;
  2. the State seeking to exercise jurisdiction has a legitimate interest in the matter; and
  3. the exercise of jurisdiction is reasonable given the balance between the State’s legitimate interests and other interests.

Although these principles may not have been presented and emphasised in this way before, they are of course not new. Rather they can be found throughout the body of public and private international law.

Using these principles as our point of departure, we should construct more detailed — field of law specific — norms. In other words, these principles are not intended to be directly applied as such by the courts. Instead, they will be important as a tool in the interpretation of the mentioned field of law specific norms to which they should give rise.

Furthermore, the practical consequences of the shift from our current territoriality focus to the proposed framework, if conducted carefully and diligently, will be minimal in noncontroversial areas of jurisdiction. For example, a State would obviously have a substantial connection to, and a legitimate interest in, a traffic offence occurring within its territory. The balancing principle between that State’s legitimate interests and other interests ought not to cause any complications in such instances.

The absolute majority of cases, whether or not they involve the internet, would not augur a conflict between territoriality on the one hand, and a substantial connection and legitimate interest on the other hand. At the same time, the proposed reform would make us much better equipped to address what are now controversial areas. It would allow us to think more creatively rather than just in a mechanically binary fashion. It would, for example, free us from the thinking that a State must always have a possible jurisdictional claim over all aspects of data that happen to be located on a server located within its borders (consider e.g. the ongoing dispute between Microsoft and the US Government).

As part of the symposium issue, three internationally recognised experts — Professors Cedric Ryngaert of Utrecht University, Tom Ginsburg of University of Chicago and Horatia Muir Watt of Sciences-Po Paris — wrote insightful pieces commenting on my proposal.

The introduction to the symposium issue can be found here and my proposal is here.

Professor Ryngaert’s piece can be found here; Professor Ginsburg’s piece can be found here; and Professor Muir Watt’s piece can be found here:

I will continue working on this issue and would welcome feedback. I can be contacted by email at [email protected].

Dan Jerker B Svantesson, Professor and Co-Director, Centre for Commercial Law, Faculty of Law, Bond University; Researcher, Swedish Law & Informatics Research Institute, Stockholm University; Australian Research Council Future Fellow. The views expressed herein are those of the author and are not necessarily those of the Australian Research Council.