| Summary: | This paper (forthcoming in Marie-Claire Foblets, Dirk Hanschel and Armin Höland (eds), Grenzen des Rechts (2019)) analyses the responses given by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and two arbitral tribunals to China and Russia’s non-participation in the South China Sea and Arctic Sunrise cases respectively. It enquires, first, into the limits on these tribunals’ ability to conduct their proceedings, secondly, into the limits on the non-participating States’ behaviour during the proceedings, and thirdly, into the limits for international adjudication in the law of the sea as it extends beyond the two cases. I argue that the defendant States’ non-participation did not seriously undermine the good administration of justice and the integrity of the proceedings. The procedural law as applied by the tribunals provided them with considerable flexibility and broad competencies to regulate their own procedures and to admit evidence. This allowed them to meet the practical challenges that arose at various levels. While China and Russia could not evade their party status in the cases, they were under no duty to appear. Nevertheless, the tribunals were still able to set limits on the conduct of the two States. I conclude that following these two cases, neither the effectiveness, nor the development of law of sea adjudication and the trust in its mechanisms are necessarily impaired. At least, such an impairment should not automatically be attributed to the States' non-participation.
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