Permanent Court of Arbitration

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Two Weeks in Review: 29 June—10 July 2026

July 12, 2026

“The test of a first-rate intelligence,” according to F. Scott Fitzgerald, “is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” For international lawyers in these times of the Board of Peace and the Gaza Riviera, this kind of functional cognitive dissonance has become less a mark of intelligence than a basic job requirement. But contrary to common usage, Fitzgerald did not have cynics and pragmatists in mind—quite the opposite. He continues, “One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.” In this spirit, commentators over the last fortnight have turned their attention to what Pope Leo’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas can teach us about AI governance, China’s “quiet renegotiation” of UNCLOS and its application in times of war, and the continuity of statehood for soon-submerged island states—as well as the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s decision on the termination of the UK–Rwanda Asylum Partnership Agreement, battlefield medicine and the principle of unnecessary suffering, and the…

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The Award in Rwanda versus the United Kingdom: The PCA’s Interpretation of VCLT, Article 13

July 8, 2026

The PCA’s Award in the arbitration between Rwanda and the United Kingdom, decided on May 15, 2026, was released on June 1, 20226. The arbitration related to the decision by the incoming Labour Government to cancel the Agreement between the United Kingdom and Rwanda (formally the Agreement between the Government of the Republic of Rwanda and the…

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Crimean Coastal State Rights and the Resilience of International Arbitration

June 30, 2026

Introduction On 15 June 2026, the Permanent Court of Arbitration published its merits award in Ukraine v. the Russian Federation concerning coastal state rights in the Black Sea, Sea of Azov, and Kerch Strait (PCA Case No. 2017-06). The award itself had been issued on 22 April 2026. The case concerned an array…

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The Empire Strikes Back: Russia’s Procedural Offensive Before International Courts and Tribunals

January 30, 2026

In the immediate aftermath of the Russian invasion on 24 February 2022, Ukraine and its allies turned to international adjudication with remarkable speed and intensity. This early legal mobilisation enabled Ukraine to seize the legal narrative surrounding the conflict, ‘using its smart-power assets in a case where there’s a hard-power disadvantage and the rule of law is…

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Immunities and Compromissory Clauses: Making Sense of Enrica Lexie (Part II)

August 27, 2020

In Part I of this post, we discussed how the Arbitral Tribunal, in its recently-released award in the Enrica Lexie case, approached the question of incidental jurisdiction over questions of immunity. While the Tribunal’s jurisdiction, under Article 288 UNCLOS, was limited to ‘dispute[s] concerning the interpretation or application of th[e] [Law of the Sea] Convention’…

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