National Encounters with the International Court of Justice: Avoiding Litigating Antarctic Sovereignty

• Main Author: Scott, Shirley
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: University of Melbourne 2021
• Subjects: anzsrc-for: 1801 Law; Antarc*; Antarctic
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.4/unsworks_79790; https://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/bitstreams/138948b2-c905-4364-b857-66e5607c33c1/download

This article examines the two episodes during which the International Court of Justice (ICJ) came closest to directly considering who has sovereignty over which portion of the Antarctic continent. The first was the period from 1947 to 1955, when the United Kingdom made multiple attempts to take Chile and Argentina to the ICJ. The second was the Whaling in the Antarctic case commenced by Australia in 2010, which concerned Japan's whaing program off the Australian Antarctic Territory. Of the six countries involved in these two episodes, only the UK was favourably disposed to having the ICJ determine the question. Viewed with hindsight, it may well have worked out for the better that the Court did not rule on the matter because if UK confidence had indeed been reflected in the resultant judgment, the UK may not have been prepared to agree to art IV of The Antarctic Treaty, by which claimants agreed not to press their claims while also agreeing to accept that other states would not recognise their sovereignty on the continent. The agreement to disagree as contained in art IV has underpinned the operation of what is widely regarded as one of the most successful of international regimes.