Corrigé
Corrected
CR 2016/3
International Court Cour internationale
of Justice de Justice
THE HAGUE LA HAYE
YEAR 2016
Public sitting
held on Wednesday 9 March 2016, at 10 a.m., at the Peace Palace,
President Abraham presiding,
in the case regarding Obligations concerning Negotiations relating to Cessation
of the Nuclear Arms Race and to Nuclear Disarmament
(Marshall Islands v. United Kingdom)
Preliminary Objections
____________________
VERBATIM RECORD
____________________
ANNÉE 2016
Audience publique
tenue le mercredi 9 mars 2016, à 10 heures, au Palais de la Paix,
sous la présidence de M. Abraham, président,
en l’affaire des Obligations relatives à des négociations concernant la cessation
de la course aux armes nucléaires et le désarmement nucléaire
(Iles Marshall c. Royaume-Uni)
Exceptions préliminaires
________________
COMPTE RENDU
________________ - 2 -
Present: President Abraham
Vice-President Yusuf
Judges Owada
Tomka
Bennouna
Cançado Trindade
Greenwood
Xue
Donoghue
Gaja
Sebutinde
Bhandari
Robinson
Crawford
Gevorgian
Judge ad hoc Bedjaoui
Registrar Couvreur
- 3 -
Présents : M. Abraham, président
M. Yusuf, vice-président
MM. Owada
Tomka
Bennouna
Cançado Trindade
Greenwood
Mmes Xue
Donoghue
M. Gaja
Mme Sebutinde
MM. Bhandari
Robinson
Crawford
Gevorgian, juges
M. Bedjaoui, juge ad hoc
M. Couvreur, greffier
- 4 -
The Government of the Republic of the Marshall Islands is represented by:
H.E. Mr. Tony deBrum,
Mr. Phon van den Biesen, Attorney at Law, van den Biesen Kloostra Advocaten, Amsterdam,
as Co-Agents;
Ms Deborah Barker-Manase, Chargé d’affaires a.i. and Deputy Permanent Representative of the
Republic of the Marshall Islands to the United Nations, New York,
as Member of the Delegation;
Ms Laurie B. Ashton, Attorney, Seattle, United States of America,
Mr. Nicholas Grief, Professor of Law, University of Kent, member of the English Bar,
United Kingdom,
Mr. Luigi Condorelli, Professor of International Law, University of Florence, Italy, Honorary
Professor of International Law, University of Geneva,
Mr. Paolo Palchetti, Professor of International Law, University of Macerata, Italy,
Mr. John Burroughs, New York, United States of America,
Ms Christine Chinkin, Emerita Professor of International Law, London School of Economics,
member of the English Bar, United Kingdom,
Mr. Roger S. Clark, Board of Governors Professor, Rutgers Law School, New Jersey, United States
of America,
as Counsel and Advocates;
Mr. David Krieger, Santa Barbara, United States of America,
Mr. Peter Weiss, New York, United States of America,
Mr. Lynn Sarko, Attorney, Seattle, United States of America,
as Counsel;
Ms Amanda Richter, member of the English Bar,
Ms Sophie Elizabeth Bones, LL.B., LL.M., United Kingdom,
Mr. J. Dylan van Houcke, LL.B., LL.M., Ph.D. Candidate, Birkbeck, University of London,
United Kingdom,
Mr. Loris Marotti, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Macerata, Italy,
Mr. Lucas Lima, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Macerata, Italy,
Mr. Rob van Riet, London, United Kingdom,
Ms Alison E. Chase, Attorney, Santa Barbara, United States of America,
as Assistants;
Mr. Nick Ritchie, Lecturer in International Security, University of York, United Kingdom,
as Technical Adviser. - 5 -
Le Gouvernement de la République des Iles Marshall est représenté par :
S. Exc. M. Tony deBrum,
M. Phon van den Biesen, avocat, van den Biesen Kloostra Advocaten, Amsterdam,
comme coagents ;
Mme Deborah Barker-Manase, chargé d’affaires a.i. et représentant permanent adjoint de la
République des Iles Marshall auprès de l’Organisation des Nations Unies à New York,
comme membre de la délégation ;
Mme Laurie B. Ashton, avocat, Seattle, Etats-Unis d’Amérique,
M. Nicholas Grief, professeur de droit à l’Université du Kent, membre du barreau d’Angleterre,
Royaume-Uni,
M. Luigi Condorelli, professeur de droit international à l’Université de Florence, Italie, professeur
honoraire de droit international à l’Université de Genève,
M. Paolo Palchetti, professeur de droit international à l’Université de Macerata, Italie,
M. John Burroughs, New York, Etats-Unis d’Amérique,
Mme Christine Chinkin, professeur émérite de droit international à la London School of
Economics, membre du barreau d’Angleterre, Royaume-Uni,
M. Roger S. Clark, Board of Governors Professor à la faculté de droit de l’Université Rutgers,
New Jersey, Etats-Unis d’Amérique,
comme conseils et avocats ;
M. David Krieger, Santa Barbara, Etats-Unis d’Amérique,
M. Peter Weiss, New York, Etats-Unis d’Amérique,
M. Lynn Sarko, avocat, Seattle, Etats-Unis d’Amérique,
comme conseils ;
Mme Amanda Richter, membre du barreau d’Angleterre,
Mme Sophie Elizabeth Bones, LL.B., LL.M, Royaume-Uni,
M. J. Dylan van Houcke, LL.B., LL.M, doctorant au Birkbeck College, Université de Londres,
Royaume-Uni,
M. Loris Marotti, doctorant à l’Université de Macerata, Italie,
M. Lucas Lima, doctorant à l’Université de Macerata, Italie,
M. Rob van Riet, Londres, Royaume-Uni,
Mme Alison E. Chase, avocat, Santa Barbara, Etats-Unis d’Amérique,
comme assistants ;
M. Nick Ritchie, chargé de cours en sécurité internationale à l’Université d’York, Royaume-Uni,
comme conseiller technique. - 6 -
The Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is represented
by:
H.E. Sir Geoffrey Adams, K.C.M.G., Ambassador of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Northern Ireland to the Kingdom of the Netherlands;
Mr. Iain Macleod, Legal Adviser, Foreign and Commonwealth Office,
as Agent;
Ms Catherine Adams,
Mr. Shehzad Charania, Legal Adviser, Embassy of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Northern Ireland, The Hague,
as Deputy Agents;
Mr. Christopher Stephen, Assistant Legal Adviser, Foreign and Commonwealth Office,
as Adviser;
Sir Daniel Bethlehem, Q.C., member of the English Bar,
Mr. Guglielmo Verdirame, Professor of International Law, King’s College London, member of
the English Bar,
Mrs. Jessica Wells, member of the English Bar,
as Counsel and Advocates. - 7 -
Le Gouvernement du Royaume-Uni de Grande-Bretagne et d’Irlande du Nord est représenté
par :
S. Exc. sir Geoffrey Adams, K.C.M.G., ambassadeur du Royaume-Uni de Grande-Bretagne et
d’Irlande du Nord auprès du Royaume des Pays-Bas ;
M. Iain Macleod, conseiller juridique au ministère des affaires étrangères et du Commonwealth,
comme agent ;
Mme Catherine Adams,
M. Shehzad Charania, conseiller juridique à l’ambassade du Royaume-Uni de Grande-Bretagne
et d’Irlande du Nord au Royaume des Pays-Bas,
comme agents adjoints ;
M. Christopher Stephen, conseiller juridique adjoint au ministère des affaires étrangères et du
Commonwealth,
comme conseiller ;
sir Daniel Bethlehem, Q.C., membre du barreau d’Angleterre,
M. Guglielmo Verdirame, professeur de droit international au King’s College, Londres, membre
du barreau d’Angleterre,
Mme Jessica Wells, membre du barreau d’Angleterre,
comme conseils et avocats. - 8 -
Le PRESIDENT : Veuillez vous asseoir. L’audience est ouverte.
La Cour se réunit à partir d’aujourd’hui pour entendre les plaidoiries des Parties sur les
exceptions préliminaires soulevées par le Royaume-Uni en l’affaire des Obligations relatives à des
négociations concernant la cessation de la course aux armes nucléaires et le désarmement
nucléaire (Iles Marshall c. Royaume-Uni).
La Cour ne comptant sur le siège aucun juge de la nationalité des Iles Marshall, ces dernières
se sont prévalues du droit que leur confère le paragraphe 2 de l’article 31 du Statut et elles ont
désigné M. Mohammed Bedjaoui comme juge ad hoc.
L’article 20 du Statut dispose que «[t]out membre de la Cour doit, avant d’entrer en
fonctions, prendre l’engagement solennel d’exercer ses attributions en pleine impartialité et en
toute conscience». En vertu du paragraphe 6 de l’article 31 du Statut, cette disposition s’applique
également aux juges ad hoc.
Bien que M. Bedjaoui ait été désigné juge ad hoc en d’autres affaires dans lesquelles il a fait
des déclarations solennelles, il lui faut, conformément au paragraphe 3 de l’article 8 du Règlement
de la Cour, en faire une nouvelle en la présente espèce.
J’ai rappelé avant-hier, en ouvrant les audiences en l’affaire entre les Iles Marshall et l’Inde,
la carrière marquante et les qualifications éminentes de M. Bedjaoui.
J’invite maintenant M. Bedjaoui à prendre l’engagement solennel prescrit par l’article 20 du
Statut et je demande à toutes les personnes présentes de bien vouloir se lever. Monsieur Bedjaoui.
M. BEDJAOUI :
«Je déclare solennellement que je remplirai mes devoirs et exercerai mes
attributions de juge en tout honneur et dévouement, en pleine et parfaite impartialité et
en toute conscience.»
Le PRESIDENT : Je vous remercie. Veuillez vous asseoir. La Cour prend acte de la
déclaration solennelle faite par M. Bedjaoui.
* * - 9 -
Je vais maintenant rappeler les principales étapes de la procédure en l’affaire.
Par requête déposée au Greffe de la Cour le 24 avril 2014, la République des Iles Marshall a
introduit une instance contre le Royaume-Uni de Grande-Bretagne et d’Irlande du Nord, faisant en
particulier grief à celui-ci d’avoir manqué à des obligations qui lui incomberaient en vertu du traité
sur la non-prolifération des armes nucléaires de 1968 et du droit international coutumier, «relatives
à la cessation de la course aux armements nucléaires à une date rapprochée et au désarmement
nucléaire».
Pour fonder la compétence de la Cour, les Iles Marshall invoquent les déclarations faites, en
vertu du paragraphe 2 de l’article 36 du Statut de la Cour, par le Royaume-Uni le 5 juillet 2004
(déclaration déposée auprès du Secrétaire général des Nations Unies le 5 juillet 2004 également) et
par elles-mêmes le 15 mars 2013 (déclaration déposée auprès du Secrétaire général le
24 avril 2013).
Par ordonnance en date du 16 juin 2014, la Cour a fixé au 16 mars 2015 et au
16 décembre 2015, respectivement, les dates d’expiration des délais pour le dépôt d’un mémoire
des Iles Marshall et d’un contre-mémoire du Royaume-Uni. Le mémoire des Iles Marshall a été
déposé dans le délai ainsi prescrit.
Le 15 juin 2015, dans le délai prescrit au paragraphe 1 de l’article 79 du Règlement, le
Royaume-Uni a soulevé des exceptions préliminaires à la compétence de la Cour et à la
recevabilité de la requête. En conséquence, par ordonnance du 19 juin 2015, le président,
constatant que la procédure sur le fond était suspendue en application du paragraphe 5 de
l’article 79 du Règlement, et compte tenu de l’instruction de procédure V, a fixé au
15 octobre 2015 la date d’expiration du délai dans lequel les Iles Marshall pourraient présenter un
exposé écrit contenant leurs observations et conclusions sur les exceptions préliminaires soulevées
par le Royaume-Uni. Les Iles Marshall ont déposé un tel exposé dans le délai ainsi fixé, et l’affaire
s’est alors trouvée en état pour ce qui est des exceptions préliminaires.
* - 10 -
Conformément au paragraphe 2 de l’article 53 de son Règlement, la Cour, après avoir
consulté les Parties, a décidé de rendre accessibles au public, à l’ouverture de la procédure orale,
des exemplaires des pièces de procédure et des documents annexés. En outre, l’ensemble de ces
documents seront placés dès aujourd’hui sur le site Internet de la Cour.
*
Je note la présence devant la Cour des agents, conseils et avocats des deux Parties.
Conformément aux dispositions relatives à l’organisation de la procédure arrêtées par la Cour, les
audiences comprendront un premier et un second tour de plaidoiries. Chaque Partie disposera
d’une séance de trois heures pour le premier tour, et d’une séance de 90 minutes pour le second. Il
s’agit bien évidemment d’un temps de parole maximal, que les Parties ne devront utiliser qu’en tant
que de besoin. Le premier tour débute aujourd’hui et se terminera le vendredi 11 mars. Le second
tour de plaidoiries s’ouvrira le lundi 14 mars et s’achèvera le surlendemain, c’est-à-dire le
mercredi 16.
Le Royaume-Uni, qui a soulevé des exceptions préliminaires en l’espèce, sera entendu le
premier aujourd’hui.
Je donne la parole à l’agent du Royaume-Uni, M. Macleod.
Mr. MACLEOD:
1. Mr. President, Members of the Court, it is an honour for me to appear before you today as
the Agent of the United Kingdom.
2. Mr. President, allow me to introduce to the Court the members of the United Kingdom
delegation: First, His Excellency Sir Geoffrey Adams, British Ambassador to the Netherlands;
then, appearing as Deputy Agent is Mr. Shehzad Charania, Legal Adviser from our Embassy in
The Hague. Counsel for the United Kingdom are: Sir Daniel Bethlehem, Q.C.;
Professor Guglielmo Verdirame; and Mrs. Jessica Wells. Together, counsel will present the
United Kingdom’s oral argument. Acting as Adviser is my colleague, Mr. Christopher Stephen, of
the Foreign & Commonwealth Office Legal Advisers. - 11 -
3. Mr. President, the United Kingdom’s oral argument will be structured and divided as
follows.
4. First, Sir Daniel will address the first and fifth of the United Kingdom’s preliminary
objections in this case, as ordered in our written statement of 15 June 2015. The first objection is
that there is no justiciable dispute between the Marshall Islands and the United Kingdom. And the
fifth is that, in any event, any judgment of the Court would be incapable of effective application
and that therefore the Court should decline to exercise jurisdiction in this case.
5. Second, Professor Verdirame will then address the United Kingdom’s second and third
preliminary objections, which concern the respective optional clause declarations of the
Marshall Islands and the United Kingdom, and the question of jurisdiction ratione temporis. The
terms of these declarations the United Kingdom submits deprive this Court of jurisdiction
over this case brought by the Marshall Islands.
6. Finally, Mrs. Wells will address the United Kingdom’s fourth preliminary objection;
namely that in the absence before this Court of other essential parties whose interests are directly
engaged by the Marshall Islands’ claim, the Court lacks jurisdiction to hear this case or the case is
inadmissible or, indeed, both.
7. Mr. President, with your leave, I would now ask you to invite Sir Daniel Bethlehem to
address the Court. Thank you.
Le PRESIDENT : Je donne à présent la parole à Sir Daniel Bethlehem. Vous avez la parole.
Sir Daniel BETHLEHEM:
I. Introduction and preliminary observations
1. Mr. President, Members of the Court, it is an honour and a privilege to appear before you
again representing the United Kingdom. I will be on my feet for about 70 minutes or so.
Mr. President, if it is helpful to anticipate this, I imagine that the mid-morning break might
conveniently follow my submissions.
2. Mr. President, Members of the Court, the submissions we make today, objecting to the
jurisdiction of the Court and the admissibility of the Application brought by our friends from the - 12 -
Marshall Islands, are advanced more in sorrow than in anger. We agree with the objective at the
heart of their Application, namely, that more should and must be done towards the objective in
Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective
measures towards nuclear disarmament. We also acknowledge our obligation under Article VI of
the NPT, in common with all the other NPT parties. There is no dispute between us. This case
should never have reached the Bar of the Court.
3. As this is a hearing on jurisdiction, we will not engage with the merits of the allegations
made by the Marshall Islands. Our objections to jurisdiction and admissibility are of an entirely
preliminary character. This said, the Marshall Islands alleges that we have acted in bad faith, over
decades, in the performance of our treaty obligations. Given the seriousness of this allegation, it is
appropriate, for the record at least, to draw attention to the document at Annex 2 of our written
submissions and also to the statement made in the United Kingdom’s 22 April 2015 Report on the
implementation of the action plan of the 2010 NPT Review Conference. In that Report , a publicly
available document on the United Nations website, the United Kingdom stated:
“[that it] is committed to a world without nuclear weapons in line with our obligations
under article VI of the [NPT] and firmly believes that the best way to achieve this goal
is through gradual disarmament negotiated using a step-by-step approach within the
framework of the United Nations disarmament machinery and the Treaty on the
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
[The statement continues]
We remain determined to continue to work with partners across the
international community to prevent proliferation and to make progress on multilateral
nuclear disarmament, to build trust and confidence between nuclear and non-nuclear
weapon States, and to take tangible steps towards a safer and more stable world, in
which countries with nuclear weapons feel able to relinquish them.
The United Kingdom has a strong record on nuclear disarmament. We have
steadily reduced the size of our own nuclear forces by well over 50 per cent since our
Cold War peak and since 1998 all of our air-delivered nuclear weapons have been
withdrawn and dismantled.”
Document NPT/CONF.2015/29, at paragraphs 4, 7 and 8; readily publicly available on the UN website at:
http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=NPT/CONF.2015/29. - 13 -
II. Scheme of submissions
4. Mr. President, Members of the Court, against this background, the scheme of my
submissions to come is as follows. I will first make some brief observations on the
Marshall Islands’ case, to place our submissions in context (Section III). I will then address the
point that the Court’s jurisdiction must be assessed on the date of the filing of the Application
instituting proceedings (Section IV). This is closely linked to our first preliminary objection. I will
thereafter address in greater detail the first and last preliminary objections addressed in the
United Kingdom’s written statement, namely, first, that there is no justiciable dispute between the
Marshall Islands and the United Kingdom over which the Court can properly assume jurisdiction
(Section V), and, second, that the Marshall Islands’ claim falls outside the judicial function of the
Court and the Court should accordingly decline to exercise jurisdiction (Section VI). Finally, I will
make some brief concluding observations (Section VII).
III. The Marshall Islands’ case
5. Mr. President, Members of the Court, I turn to some brief observations on the
Marshall Islands’ case for purposes of placing our jurisdictional submissions in context. In doing
so, I note that the case against the United Kingdom is the only one of the three cases that you are
hearing in parallel in which the Marshall Islands has filed a Memorial on the merits. We know
therefore, with clarity, the case that the Marshall Islands is advancing on the merits against the
United Kingdom. This is directly relevant to a number of our objections to jurisdiction and
admissibility, as will become plain in our submissions today.
6. In its Statement of Observations (WSMI) in reply to our Preliminary Objections (POUK),
the Marshall Islands responded to the United Kingdom’s legal objections to jurisdiction and
admissibility. They made no comment, however, on our description, carefully accurate, of the case
that they have brought against us. They evidently considered that we had described their case
fairly, even if in summary terms. It is important for purposes of this jurisdictional hearing that the
Court has a clear appreciation of the case that the Marshall Islands brings against the United
Kingdom, as this goes directly to a number of the preliminary objections that we have made.
7. We addressed the Marshall Islands’ case in general terms in paragraphs 19 to 23 of our
written submissions as well as elsewhere in the pleading in more detail going to the particular - 14 -
objection that was then being addressed. There are three brief points that I would make that go to
our jurisdictional objections in general terms.
8. The first point is that the very core of the Marshall Islands case is that the breaches alleged
against the United Kingdom are described as “continuing breaches”. This is their language. We
see this set out in paragraph 7 of their Application where the Marshall Islands alleges that the
United Kingdom is in continuing breach of its obligations under Article VI of the NPT; is in
continuing breach of customary international law with regard to the same obligations; and is
continuing breach of its obligation to perform its international obligations in good faith. This
language is repeated in identical terms in paragraph 7 of the Marshall Islands’ Memorial.
9. The second point is that the particular allegations that the Marshall Islands levels at the
United Kingdom reference conduct by the United Kingdom in the 1950s, in the 1960s, in
the 1970s, in the 1980s and in the early 1990s, all pre-dating the Marshall Islands’ accession to
the NPT on 30 January 1995, the date which the Marshall Islands’ identifies as the “critical date”
for purposes of their case. “Critical date” is not a term that the Marshall Islands uses but the import
of the discussion in their Statement of Observations is clear. The actionable breach that they allege
is a breach that they trace back to their accession to the NPT on 30 January 1995 , although on the
basis of alleged antecedent conduct going back before this date to which they would wish you to
have regard.
10. The discussion of the roots of the Marshall Islands’ case is to be found in their statement
of facts at paragraphs 19 to 29 of their Application, as well as in the corresponding factual
discussion in their Memorial. More particularly, it is to be found in paragraphs 61, 66, 67, 68, 69
and 70 of their Memorial, all of which root post-1995 UK conduct in the United Kingdom’s
longer-term approach to nuclear disarmament.
11. In their written reply to our preliminary objections, the Marshall Islands describes this
discussion of developments as being merely “by way of historical background” . As you will hear
from Professor Verdirame, however, the Marshall Islands’ case cannot be so easily parsed up into
“historical background” and, distinctly, post critical-date allegations of breach. The case that they
2Written Statement of Observations and Submissions of the Marshall Islands (WSMI), para. 76.
3WSMI, para. 72. - 15 -
bring against us rests on allegations of an ongoing, a continuing, violation, with core elements of
post-1995 practice being firmly rooted in pre-1995 conduct.
12. My third point is that the allegation that the Marshall Islands levels at the
United Kingdom is an allegation of shared responsibility for breach of the Article VI,
NPT obligations and what are alleged to be parallel obligations of customary international law.
Significantly, this allegation of shared responsibility is not simply cast in generic terms. It is
developed by way of allegations that go expressly to bilateral conduct of the United Kingdom with
other States States that are not before the Court in these proceedings. This element will be
developed and addressed further in the submissions of Mrs. Wells.
13. Mr. President, Members of the Court, I note these features of the Marshall Islands’ case
as they go directly to the issue of jurisdiction now before you. The United Kingdom is here at the
Bar of the Court because we alone amongst the NPT nuclear-weapon States have an optional clause
declaration that may arguably found the jurisdiction of the Court. The case levelled against us,
however, is a case that, by the device of an alleged bilateral dispute between the Marshall Islands
and the United Kingdom, seeks to put in issue before the Court wider and deeper questions of the
systemic effectiveness and application of a multilateral treaty commitment in respect of which the
United Kingdom would be the defendant for the conduct of its 190 States parties.
14. And, Mr. President, Members of the Court, I must add that it would not be appropriate to
parse up the Marshall Islands’ allegations against the United Kingdom to pick and choose
particular allegations over which the Court has jurisdiction and those over which it does not. The
Marshall Islands has put forward a case against the United Kingdom. It is a case that rests on
allegations of bad faith. The Court cannot address the merits of a bad-faith case against the
United Kingdom by parsing up the entrails of that case. The Marshall Islands case must stand or
fall on the allegations that they have advanced, not on some subset of those allegations that may,
through creative analysis, be found to have escaped the strictures of otherwise applicable
jurisdictional limitations. - 16 -
IV. Jurisdiction must be assessed on the date of the
filing of the Application
15. Mr. President, Members of the Court, I turn to the point that the Court’s jurisdiction must
be assessed at the moment of the filing of an application instituting proceedings. This point is
closely linked with our first preliminary objection that there is no justiciable dispute. It is a trite
observation to say that jurisdiction must be assessed at the moment of the filing of the application.
The Court’s jurisprudence is replete with affirmations of this principle, as the United Kingdom has
noted in its written submissions . As we will show, the Marshall Islands stumbles on this principle,
fatally, in our submission.
16. The Marshall Islands attempts to get round this requirement by saying that there is no bar
to consideration of conduct or the views of the Parties after the filing of the Application as part of
an assessment of whether a dispute existed on the date of the filing. They pray in aid of this
proposition an observation by the Court in the Cameroon v. Nigeria Land and Maritime Boundary
case of 1998 . It is plain, however, both from the very extract of the Cameroon v. Nigeria
Judgment quoted by the Marshall Islands and from the Judgment of the Court in that case more
generally that what the Court was there concerned with was a determination of the scope of the
dispute over which it had jurisdiction, not whether there was a justiciable dispute between the
parties at all. In the paragraph of the Court’s Judgment in Cameroon v. Nigeria preceding that
quoted by the Marshall Islands, the Court notes various arguments advanced by Nigeria that
Nigeria had failed to particularize regarding a specific portion of the Cameroon–Nigeria boundary
that Cameroon sought to bring within the dispute but which Nigeria had contended was settled. In
the passage of the Judgment relied upon by the Marshall Islands, the Court goes on to note that
while “Nigeria is entitled not to advance arguments that its considers are for the merits” at the
jurisdictional stage, the Court cannot decline jurisdiction on the ground that “[b]ecause of Nigeria’s
position, the exact scope of the dispute cannot be determined at present” . 6 In the
United Kingdom’s contention, the Cameroon v. Nigeria Judgment does not avail the
Marshall Islands in this case.
4
Preliminary Objections of the United Kingdom (POUK), para. 28.
5WSMI, para. 29.
6
Land and Maritime Boundary between Cameroon and Nigeria (Cameroon v. Nigeria), Preliminary Objections,
Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1998, p. 317, para. 93; emphasis added. - 17 -
17. The Marshall Islands, in footnote references to other cases, seeks to suggest that it is
common for the Court to take account of exchanges of views between the parties during the course
of judicial proceedings. That may be the case for some purposes, but not for purposes of
determining whether a justiciable dispute existed at the point at which the application instituting
proceedings was filed. One such judgment that they cite is the Judgment of the Court in the
Bolivia v. Chile Obligation to Negotiate Access to the Pacific Ocean case, with which all on the
Bench today will be very familiar, including the Marshall Islands’ judge ad hoc. In that case,
however, the exercise in which the Court was engaged in the paragraph cited by the
Marshall Islands was the determination of the subject-matter of the dispute . The issue of the
subject-matter of a dispute, for purposes of the determination of which the Court may properly
have regard to the way in which the parties have developed their arguments in pleadings
subsequent to the application, is not the same as the existence of a dispute per se, which stands to
be determined on the date on which the application instituting proceedings is filed. In the
Bolivia v. Chile case, there was no contention that there was no dispute between the Parties. The
contention was that the dispute was not as it had been characterized by the Applicant in that case.
This is a world apart from the preliminary objections with which you are faced in this case.
18. The general rule was addressed by the Court in some detail in its Judgment in the
Croatia v. Serbia Application of the Genocide Convention case, which finds no reference at all in
the Marshall Islands Written Statement on this issue. In that case, the Court observed that “it is
normally by reference to the date of the filing of the instrument instituting proceedings that it must
8
be determined whether [the conditions governing the Court’s jurisdiction] are met” . The Court,
going on to observe that it is easy to see why this rule exists, addressed the risks of abuse as a result
of a different approach. The Court stated as follows:
“it must be emphasized that a State which decides to bring proceedings before the
Court should carefully ascertain that all the requisite conditions for the jurisdiction of
the Court have been met at the time [the] proceedings are instituted. If this is not done
and regardless of whether these conditions later come to be fulfilled, the Court must in
7Obligation to Negotiate Access to the Pacific Ocean (Bolivia v. Chile), Preliminary Objection, Judgment of
24 September 2015, para. 26.
8
Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Croatia v. Serbia),
Preliminary Objections, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 2008, p. 438, paras. 79-80. - 18 -
principle decide the question of jurisdiction on the basis of the conditions that existed
at the time of the institution of the proceedings.”
19. The Court went on to consider exceptions to this rule, none of which apply in the present
case . Notably, the Marshall Islands could not today resubmit its Application in this case in an
attempt to rely on post-24 April 2014 developments to found their claim that there is a justiciable
dispute between the Parties. The United Kingdom’s optional clause declaration precludes just such
10
abusive resubmissions of Applications previously submitted .
20. Significantly, for present purposes, as this is a judgment and an approach that the
United Kingdom contends is controlling in this case, the Court in the Belgium v. Senegal case
explicitly rejected the contention that it could look to post-Application conduct to determine
whether a dispute existed between the parties. The Court put the issue in unvarnished terms:
“Interms of the Court’s jurisdiction, what matters is whether, on the date when the Application was
11
filed, a dispute existed between the Parties . . .”
21. Having regard to the diplomatic exchanges between the parties in that case, the Court
concluded that Belgium had not been able to show that a dispute existed between the parties on the
matter under review “on that date”, i.e., on the date of the filing of the Application . 12
22. Mr. President, Members of the Court, as in the Belgium v. Senegal case so also in the
present case. The Court’s jurisdiction in this case must be determined by reference to the question:
was there a dispute between the Marshall Islands and the United Kingdom over the
United Kingdom’s compliance with its Article VI NPT obligations, and any alleged parallel
obligation of customary international law, on 24 April 2014, the date of the filing of the
Marshall Islands’ Application instituting proceedings. As I will come to address more fully in just
a moment, the answer to this question is unavoidably and resoundingly “no”. There is no basis
whatever, not a shred or scintilla of evidence presented by the Marshall Islands, on which the Court
9Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Croatia v. Serbia),
Preliminary Objections, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 2008, pp. 438-440, paras. 81–85.
10
Paragraph 1 (iv) of the United Kingdom’s optional clause declaration of 31 December 2014 excludes
jurisdiction with regards to “any dispute which is substantially the same as a dispute previously submitted to the Court by
the same or another Party.”
11
Questions relating to the Obligation to Prosecute or Extradite (Belgium v. Senegal), Judgment, I.C.J.
Reports 2012 (II), p. 444, para. 54.
12Ibid., p. 444, para. 54, also, para. 55. - 19 -
could properly found jurisdiction on the grounds of the existence of a dispute between the Parties
on 24 April 2014.
V. There is no justiciable dispute between the Marshall Islands and the United Kingdom
over which the Court can properly assume jurisdiction
(i) The United Kingdom’s contention
23. Mr. President, Members of the Court, against this background, and building on the point
just addressed about the date on which the Court’s jurisdiction falls to be determined, I turn more
directly to our preliminary objection that there is no justiciable dispute between the
Marshall Islands and the United Kingdom over which the Court can properly assume jurisdiction.
24. Up until the point of the filing of the Marshall Islands’ Application instituting these
proceedings against the United Kingdom, there had been no diplomatic exchanges, no discussions,
no démarches, no correspondence, no side comments in the margins of some other meeting,
nothing, not a single word, from the Marshall Islands to the United Kingdom raising the issue of
nuclear disarmament and what the Marshall Islands now contends is the United Kingdom’s bad
faith, going back decades, in its conduct pursuant to the obligations created by Article VI of the
NPT. Not content with the absence of any record of such discussions in the Marshall Islands’
Application, in its Memorial and in its Statement of Observations, the United Kingdom has gone
back over all the records that we can find in our bilateral diplomatic exchanges with the
Marshall Islands to see if there is any reference to the Marshall Islands ever having raised with the
United Kingdom the issue of nuclear disarmament, of the interpretation and application of
Article VI of the NPT, of the United Kingdom’s conduct in pursuit of this commitment. We found
nothing. Not a single sentence. Nothing!
25. The same goes for our records of multilateral discussions in which both the
Marshall Islands and the United Kingdom participated not simply limited to meetings concerned
with nuclear disarmament, such as the successive NPT Review Conference meetings but also
any and all multilateral meetings at which representatives from the Marshall Islands interacted with
their counterparts from the United Kingdom. Despite the opportunity presented by such meetings,
there is no record anywhere, at any time, at any place, of a representative of the Marshall Islands - 20 -
saying to a counterpart from the United Kingdom “we would like to talk to you about Article VI of
the NPT and the steps you are taking in implementation thereof”. There is no record of a report by
a United Kingdom diplomat recording that he or she was demarched by the Marshall Islands on
nuclear disarmament. There is no note in the United Kingdom diplomatic archives that records an
allegation, whether the provenance was the Marshall Islands or a third State reporting on the
Marshall Islands’ views, that the Marshall Islands considered United Kingdom conduct in the field
of nuclear disarmament to be in some way in bad faith by reference to its NPT obligations. There
is nothing! There is only silence!
26. Mr. President, Members of the Court, silence is telling. Silence can be interpreted. It has
legal implications. And I do not here talk in terms of acquiescence or estoppel or waiver. I am
simply talking here about whether there is anything, anything at all in the evidential record, that
suggests that, until the moment that the United Kingdom learned through the press that the
Marshall Islands had filed an Application with the Court, there had been some dispute lurking in
the shadows between the Marshall Islands and the United Kingdom over our conduct in respect of
Article VI of the NPT. There is nothing. Indeed, the United Kingdom had thought, although
naively, as it now appears, that we had a strong record on nuclear disarmament. We have
unilaterally reduced our nuclear arsenal. As our Written Statement notes , we have participated
actively in initiatives, both regional and global, to lay the groundwork for a more comprehensive
approach to nuclear disarmament. We have reported assiduously and in detail through the NPT
Review Conference process on the steps that we have taken towards the fulfilment of Article VI of
the NPT.
27. Mr. President, Members of the Court, in our Written Statement, the United Kingdom
drew attention to Article 43 of the International Law Commission’s Articles on State
Responsibility which, under the heading “Notice of claim by an injured State”, says as follows:
“An injured State which invokes the responsibility of another State shall give notice of its claim to
that State.” This injunction is repeated in Article 48 (3) of the ILC Articles with regard to
circumstances in which the State invoking responsibility of another is not itself the injured State.
1POUK, para. 4. - 21 -
28. Lest there be any doubt that the International Law Commission was here addressing
pre-litigation notice to the State whose responsibility was being invoked, the commentaries to
Article 43 makes it clear that this is exactly what was in contemplation. The commentaries recall
the Court’s observations in the Certain Phosphates Lands in Nauru case, between Nauru and
14
Australia , in which the Court rejected an objection to the admissibility of the Application on the
ground that Australia had been aware of the claim from diplomatic communications from Nauru . 15
The point on the importance of notice is underlined in the Third Report of the Special Rapporteur
in the following terms, and I quote an extract from paragraphs 237 to 239 of the Third Report of the
Special Rapporteur in which he says:
“237 . . . despite its flexibility and its reliance on the context provided by the
relations between the two States concerned the Court does seem to have had regard to
the fact that the claimant State had effectively notified the respondent State of the
claim.
238. In the Special Rapporteur’s view, this approach is correct as a matter of
principle. There must be at least some minimum requirement of notification by one
State against another of a claim of responsibility, so that the responsible State is aware
of the allegation and in a position to respond to it (e.g. by ceasing the breach and
offering some appropriate form of reparation). No doubt the precise form the claim
takes will depend on the circumstances. But the draft articles should at least require
that a State invoking responsibility should give notice thereof to the responsible State.
In doing so, it would be normal to specify what conduct on its part is required by way
of cessation of any continuing wrongful act, and what form any reparation sought
should take. In addition, since the normal mode of inter-State communication is in
writing, it seems appropriate to require that the notice of claim be in writing.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
239. If a State having protested at a breach is not satisfied by any response made
by the responsible State, it is entitled to invoke the responsibility of that State by
seeking such measures of cessation, reparation, etc. as are provided for in part two.”
29. The Nauru v. Australia Judgment was given in 1992. The ILC State Responsibility
Articles and Commentaries were adopted in 2001. Since then, the Court has had occasion in two
cases to further add its own imprimatur to the principle expressed in Article 43, paragraph 1, of the
1Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts, Commentaries, at Art. 43, para. (4):
http://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/commentaries/9_6_2001….
1Certain Phosphate Lands in Nauru (Nauru v. Australia), Preliminary Objections, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports
1992, pp. 253-255, paras. 31–36. - 22 -
16
State Responsibility Articles. These cases are Georgia v. Russia in 2011 and Belgium v. Senegal
in 2012 .7
30. Mr. President, Members of the Court, I do not repeat here the discussion of these
Judgments set out in our written pleadings at paragraphs 38 to 44. I will return to the cases in just a
moment when addressing the Marshall Islands’ response to the United Kingdom’s objection. I note
simply at this point that the Court’s Judgments in these cases are ad idem with the approach taken
by the International Law Commission and its Special Rapporteur a decade earlier and by the Court
itself two decades earlier in the Nauru v. Australia case. These Judgments also reflect the
importance that the Court attaches to identifying, for jurisdictional purposes, that the claim by the
applicant is opposed by the respondent at the point at which the application is filed.
31. In support of the principle that emerges from these cases, the United Kingdom also
pointed to the trend in other dispute settlement procedures of international law to explicitly require
prior notification before the filing of a claim. These procedures include those under the
United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), those under the dispute settlement
procedures of the World Trade Organization, and those that are common in the field of
international investment disputes.
(ii) The Marshall Islands’ reply
32. Mr. President, Members of the Court, the Marshall Islands written response to this
objection advanced three points. First, they say that ILC Article 43 is not concerned with questions
of the jurisdiction of international courts and tribunals and the admissibility of claims, and quote in
support the commentaries to Article 44 of the ILC Articles. They draw support for this reading
from the failure of the Court to refer to Article 43 in any of its judgments. In this regard, they take
issue with the United Kingdom’s reliance on the Nauru v. Australia Judgment. The
Marshall Islands also, in this regard, dismisses as inapposite and misplaced any suggestion that the
1Application of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
(Georgia v. Russian Federation), Preliminary Objections, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 2011 (I), p. 70.
17
Questions relating to the Obligation to Prosecute or Extradite (Belgium v. Senegal), Judgment,
I.C.J. Reports 2012 (II), p. 422. - 23 -
developing juridical practice from other international courts and tribunals has any relevance for the
ICJ.
33. Second, the Marshall Islands says that the existence of a general requirement of prior
notification does not find support in the case law of the Court. In this regard, they cite the
Judgment in Cameroon v. Nigeria to the effect that there is no requirement that the dispute between
the parties should have been manifested in a formal way, and they draw from this a rejection of any
requirement of prior notification. They go on to attempt to distinguish both Georgia v. Russia and
Belgium v. Senegal. In respect of Belgium v. Senegal, the Marshall Islands contends that it “made
its claims as regards the Respondent’s breaches of its obligations under the NPT and customary
18
international law before the filing of its Application” . In respect of Georgia v. Russia, they
contend that nowhere in that Judgment is there a reference to a general requirement of prior
notification. The Marshall Islands further contends that the Court has avoided setting rigid
parameters to determine the existence of a dispute. In their view, a dispute crystallizes when one
19
State makes a complaint or a protest against the conduct of another State , and that, by reference to
Cameroon v. Nigeria, there is no bar to the consideration of conduct or views after the filing of the
20
Application as part of the assessment of whether a dispute existed on the filing date .
34. Third, the Marshall Islands contends that there is in fact a dispute between the
Marshall Islands and the United Kingdom over the United Kingdom’s compliance with its
obligations under Article VI of the NPT and what the Marshall Islands alleges are parallel
obligations of customary international law . In support of this contention, the Marshall Islands
points to what it describes as “repeatedly expressed” concerns “with regard to the fulfilment by all
States possessing nuclear weapons of their obligation to pursue good [faith] negotiations leading to
22
nuclear disarmament” . Addressing the reality, which they implicitly accept, as they must, that
they have not addressed any diplomatic correspondence or other communication to the United
Kingdom on this issue, the Marshall Islands nonetheless contends that “it must be concluded that
18
Written Statement of Observations of the Marshall Islands (WSMI), para. 19; United Kingdom’s emphasis.
19WSMI, para. 25.
20WSMI, para. 29.
21
WSMI, paras. 30 ff.
22WSMI, para. 32. - 24 -
the United Kingdom must reasonably be considered to have been aware of the statement made by
the Marshall Islands” in the course of the mid-February 2014 Nayarit, Mexico, conference on the
23
humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons .
(iii) The United Kingdom’s response
35. Mr. President, Members of the Court, I turn to our response to the Marshall Islands’
arguments. For all the veneer of doing so, the Marshall Islands does not in fact engage with the
United Kingdom’s objection at a level of specificity that is at all persuasive. They miss the quite
deep trend in the development of the principle of prior notification in the jurisprudence of the Court
and in international law more generally. They misconceive the Court’s jurisprudence in important
respects. Most egregious of all, they attempt to skate over the reality from which they cannot
escape, namely, that, prior to the filing of their Application on 24 April 2014, they had never, not
once, raised with the United Kingdom the very serious allegations that they set out in their
Application.
36. On the law, in their discussions of Article 43 of the ILC State Responsibility Articles, the
Marshall Islands fails conspicuously to address the ILC’s reliance on Nauru v. Australia in its
commentaries on the Article and the Court’s Judgment in that case and the Special Rapporteur’s
analysis that informed the ILC text. I note in passing, in this regard, that the relevant extracts from
the Special Rapporteur’s reports were annexed to the United Kingdom’s written pleading and
extracted in our statement. These were not therefore issues of which the Marshall Islands could be
said to have been ignorant. Their silence reflects the only conclusion that is available, namely, that
they do not have a credible response to the United Kingdom’s case on this point.
37. The Marshall Islands contends, by reference to the commentaries to Article 44 of the
ILC Articles, that the Articles are not concerned with questions of jurisdiction and admissibility.
What they do not reference, however, is the discussion in the commentaries to Article 44 that
follows the opening sentence that they quote, in which the Commission, referencing such doctrines
as the requirement to exhaust other means of dispute settlement, comments: “By contrast [to these
other doctrines], certain questions which would be classified as questions of admissibility when
2WSMI, para. 46. - 25 -
raised before an international court are of a more fundamental character. They are conditions for
24
invoking the responsibility of the State in the first place.” The Article 43 prior notification
obligation is just such a requirement of a more fundamental character, a condition for invoking the
responsibility of the State in the first place. And both the ILC commentaries and the Special
Rapporteur’s reports make it clear that they were concerned with prior notification before the
lodging of a statement of claim . 25
38. Mr. President, Members of the Court, in her 2010 chapter in the Crawford, Pellet and
Olleson tome on The Law of International Responsibility, Jacqueline Peel, addressing Article 43,
concludes that, in practice, “a responsible State must be made aware of a breach and of the injured
State’s claims before it will be in a position to respond through taking action to cease any
continuing violations or providing reparation for the injury suffered” . The same point is made
elegantly by Georges Abi Saab in a 2013 essay entitled “Negotiation and Adjudication:
Complementarity and Dissonance”. He puts it in the following terms:
“At the beginning or at the creation, the whole process is triggered by the
emergence of a ‘dispute’. And how can such a dispute emerge except through some
kind of an exchange, i.e. [a negotiation] between the parties? In a book I wrote
45 years ago, I defined a dispute as ‘un accord sur un désaccord’, ‘an agreement to
disagree’. This is the point of crystallization of the dispute. It is when the parties,
however they communicate, put forward contradictory contentions and claims they
reciprocally reject over the same subject matter. They don’t have to negotiate directly.
They can make their positions publicly known through the media or in the General
Assembly of the UN . . .
Thus, whether we consider prior negotiations a separate admissibility condition
or a constitutive part of the condition of existence of a dispute, some kind of an
exchange or negotiation between the contenders, be they within a multilateral forum
or even by proxy, is a necessary prelude to adjudication.” 27
39. Mr. President, Members of the Court, let me repeat this last sentence, as it captures the
very essence of what we are talking about: “whether”, says Abi Saab,
“whether we consider prior negotiations a separate admissibility condition or a
constitutive part of the condition of existence of a dispute, some kind of an exchange
24
Cf. supra, fn 14: International Law Commission, Draft Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally
Wrongful Acts, Art. 44, comment (1).
2Ibid., Art. 43, comment (3).
2Crawford, Pellet and Olleson, The Law of International Responsibility, OUP, 2010, p. 1033.
27
Georges Abi Saab, “Negotiation and Adjudication: Complementarity and Dissonance”, in Dupuy, P-M,
Recourse to the International Court of Justice for the Purpose of Settling a Dispute, Nijhoff, 2013, p. 329. - 26 -
or negotiation between the contenders, be they within a multilateral forum or even by
proxy, is a necessary prelude to adjudication” (emphasis added).
40. Mr. President, Members of the Court, I have already addressed the Marshall Islands’
reliance on Cameroon v. Nigeria, reference to which recurs throughout their pleading. The
Marshall Islands prays this in aid of the proposition that international law does not require a State
to inform another of its intention to bring proceedings before the Court. The reality of the
Judgment is quite different, however, as a review of the passages to which the Marshall Islands
refers make clear. The Court, in that case, was addressing the principle of good faith and whether
it could be relied upon to found an obligation on an applicant before the Court to inform the
putative respondent of its intention to bring proceedings. The Court concluded that the principle of
good faith could not be relied upon to found such an obligation. The situation, however, is not the
same as the one in this case. The issue here does not concern the notification of an intention to
bring legal proceedings. What we are here concerned with is a failure to crystallize a dispute by
notifying the State whose responsibility is invoked of the claim asserted by the injured State.
Whether it is seen as a separate admissibility requirement or as a constitutive part of the existence
of a dispute, some kind of a prior exchange between the contenders is a necessary prelude to
adjudication.
41. Mr. President, Members of the Court, the Marshall Islands attempts to distinguish the
Court’s recent Judgments in Belgium v. Senegal and Georgia v. Russia. In respect of Belgium v.
Senegal, they do so by contending that they in fact made their claims before the filing of their
Application in this case. There is no substance to this contention whatsoever. The conduct that
they point to consists, in its entirety, of only two entirely generic statements made in multilateral
fora, neither of which address the United Kingdom and neither of which, by any stretch of the
imagination, can be taken as an expression, let alone a notification, of an allegation of a bad-faith
violation by the United Kingdom of its NPT obligations.
42. Mr. President, Members of the Court, I invite you to look for yourselves at these two
statements on which the Marshall Islands rests its case. They are at Annexes 71 and 72 of the
Marshall Islands’ Memorial. The first statement, on 26 September 2013, says as follows: - 27 -
“Disarmament comes with political will and we reaffirm and welcome
bilateral progress in this regard, including between the United States and Russia. We
urge all nuclear weapons states to intensify efforts to address their responsibilities in
moving towards an effective and secure disarmament.” 28
There is nothing, not a single syllable, in this statement that can be taken to be a notification of
dispute to and against the United Kingdom.
43. The second statement, made in mid-February 2014 at the Nayarit conference in Mexico
says in material part as follows:
“Mr. Chairman, the Marshall Islands is convinced that multilateral negotiations
on achieving and sustaining a world free of nuclear weapons are long overdue. Indeed
we believe that states possessing nuclear arsenals are failing to fulfil their legal
obligations in this regard. Immediate commencement and conclusion of such
negotiations is required by legal obligation of nuclear disarmament resting upon each
and every state under Article VI of the Non Proliferation Treaty and customary
international law.”29
44. Mr. President, Members of the Court, this statement was made almost as the ink was
drying on the nine Applications that the Marshall Islands filed on 24 April 2014. More
importantly, it was made at a conference at which the United Kingdom was not present. The
statement makes no reference to the United Kingdom. The statement does not contain, even by
implication, any allegation of a bad-faith breach of the NPT by the United Kingdom. The
Marshall Islands made no effort to bring this statement to the attention of the United Kingdom, the
fact of which we learned for the first time in the Marshall Islands’ Application.
45. Mr. President, Members of the Court, these are the acts, the sole acts, on which the
Marshall Islands bases its case that they made their claim before the filing of their Application.
This is the practice, the sole practice, on which the Marshall Islands relies to distinguish the
Court’s Judgment in Belgium v. Senegal. With the greatest of respect to our friends on the other
side, their case is simply unsustainable.
46. As for the Georgia v. Russia case, the Marshall Islands contends that nowhere in the
Judgment is there a reference to a general requirement of prior notification. Again, with all due
respect to our friends on the other side, the phrase to which they refer may not have been used by
the Court but the Court’s analysis and conclusions are as plain as day. I do not repeat here what we
28
Memorial of the Marshall Islands (MMI), Ann. 71.
2Ibid., Ann. 72. - 28 -
have said in our written statement, suffice to say that the Court undertook a detailed review of the
diplomatic practice of both States and failed to find evidence of the existence of the claimed
dispute in virtually every item of practice cited to it as none evidenced any direct allegation against
the respondent. The admissibility of the claim was only upheld by the Court on the basis of “the
exchanges between the Georgian and Russian representatives in the Security Council on
10 August 2008, the claims made by the Georgian President on 9 and 11 August and the response
on 12 August by the Russian Foreign Minister” which “establish by that day, the day on which
Georgia submitted its Application, [that] there was a dispute between Georgia and the Russian
Federation” .0
47. Mr. President, Members of the Court, the United Kingdom does not come before you to
contend that there is an immutable, inflexible rule of international law applicable in any and all
cases that requires the prior written notification of a claim as a precondition for the crystallization
of a dispute and the jurisdiction of the Court, at the point at which the application seising the Court
is filed. It is possible to conceive of cases in which the acute urgency of the matter, the nature and
severity of the conduct that is the subject-matter of the claim, the character of the breach that is
alleged, and a manifest appreciation of notice derived from the circumstances in issue of the
opposing views of the parties, may suffice to crystallize a dispute. Such a case, for example, may
be a death penalty case in which the application is accompanied by a request for provisional
measures. Beyond such exceptional cases, however, invariably involving provisional measures
proceedings as well, it is difficult to conceive of cases in which prior notification would not be
readily apparent from the circumstances or be readily achievable by a good-faith applicant intent on
exploring the possibilities of the peaceful settlement of the claimed dispute. And the case now
before you is quite clearly, by any measure, not such a case. The allegations advanced in this case
are deeply rooted in conduct going back decades and the claim alleges a breach of an obligation to
negotiate. It does not raise any question of impending conduct.
48. Mr. President, Members of the Court, the United Kingdom does not point to the practice
of the World Trade Organization or under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the
3Application of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
(Georgia v. Russian Federation), Preliminary Objections, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 2011 (I), p. 120, para. 113. - 29 -
Sea (UNCLOS) or in the field of investment arbitration for purposes of suggesting that these
developments are somehow controlling of the approach that we commend to the Court. The Court
is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations with a sui generis jurisdiction and competence,
and a unique authority. What the United Kingdom does contend is that the Court’s case law has
been instrumental in the development of a principle of general international law that requires prior
notification. The International Law Commission built on the Court’s jurisprudence. The Court has
added its weight to the developing principle. It is a principle that is entirely in keeping with the
wider tide of international dispute settlement.
49. In the present case, the claim of jurisdiction is rooted in Article 36 (2) of the Court’s
Statute. This founds jurisdiction “in all legal disputes” that come within the scope of the
declarations made by States pursuant to this provision. The requirement upon an applicant to show
the existence of a “legal dispute” is a requirement to show that there is a disagreement on a point of
law or fact, a conflict of legal views or of interests, between the applicant and the respondent
assessed at the point of the filing of the application instituting proceedings. The Marshall Islands
cannot meet its burden in this case. The existence of a justiciable dispute cannot be established by
the sole act of the filing of an application. It requires some prior exchange between the putative
parties. Whether this goes to a condition necessary for the existence of a justiciable dispute, or to
jurisdiction, or to admissibility, is of no moment. The Marshall Islands cannot bring itself within
this threshold requirement.
VI. The Court’s judicial function and the principle of effectiveness
50. Mr. President, Members of the Court, I come now to our fifth preliminary objection
rooted in the judicial function of the Court and the principle of effectiveness. I can address this
succinctly. I do not repeat what we have said in our written pleadings other than to summarize our
contention, based in the Court’s Judgments in the Northern Cameroons case and the Nuclear Tests
31
case that the Court should decline to exercise jurisdiction in circumstances in which to do so
would require it to render a judgment that is incapable of effective application. This, in our
3Northern Cameroons (Cameroon v. United Kingdom), Preliminary Objections, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1963,
p. 15; Nuclear Tests (Australia v. France), Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1974, p. 253; Preliminary Objections of the United
Kingdom (POUK), paras. 104-112. - 30 -
submission, is what the Marshall Islands asks of the Court in this case; a judgment that would be
incapable of any meaningful and effective application.
51. In its prayer for relief, in identical terms in its Application and Memorial, the Marshall
Islands asks the Court for declarations that the United Kingdom has violated and continues to
violate its NPT obligations and the alleged parallel obligations under customary international law.
The Marshall Islands goes on to request the Court to order the United Kingdom to take all steps
necessary to comply with its obligations including, by initiation if necessary, of negotiations in
good faith aimed at the conclusion of a convention on nuclear disarmament. In its response to the
United Kingdom’s preliminary objections, the Marshall Islands addresses the practical
consequences of the relief that they seek in terms that contemplate an order that the United
Kingdom support the commencement of negotiations on nuclear disarmament, although falling
short of any particular action such as voting for a particular General Assembly resolution. The
United Kingdom would though, on this conception, be required to actively participate in good faith
in negotiations once underway.
52. Mr. President, Members of the Court, the Marshall Islands’ allegations go to their
political appreciation about the way in which NPT States parties should address their NPT
Article VI obligation to negotiate. But a judgment on the merits by the Court would not bind any
of the 190 States parties to the NPT apart from the Marshall Islands and the United Kingdom. And,
while the United Kingdom would be happy to open a bilateral dialogue with the Marshall Islands
about nuclear disarmament, it bears emphasis that the Marshall Islands has never, not once, ever
sought such a dialogue with the United Kingdom.
53. Mr. President, Members of the Court, the Court, in its 1996 Advisory Opinion on the
Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons concluded that it was unable to reach a view that the policy of
deterrence was unlawful, referring repeatedly to the practice of an appreciable section of the
32
international community in support of such a policy . In bilateral proceedings of the kind now in
contemplation, it is inconceivable that the Court could revisit this conclusion with any different
result.
3Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. Reports 1996 (I), pp. 254 ff, inter
alia, at paras. 66, 67, 73 and 96. - 31 -
54. The same holds true for the now famous conclusion by the Court, contained in
paragraph 97 of the Advisory Opinion and paragraph E of the dispositif, decided on the casting
vote of the then President of the Court that the Court could not conclude definitively whether the
threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in the extreme circumstance of
self-defence, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake. On this point, too, it would be
inconceivable that the Court could revisit its conclusion in bilateral proceedings of the kind now in
contemplation.
55. Against this background, and given both the stakes and the risks, negotiations towards a
treaty on general and complete disarmament in the nuclear field are about as sensitive an endeavour
as it is possible to imagine, engaging fine political judgments in a highly unstable and dangerous
world. A judgment by the Court on the merits would not bind any State other than the Marshall
Islands and the United Kingdom. It would not bind any non-State actor. Yet it is into this world
that the Marshall Islands would seek to inject declarations by the Court of bad-faith illegality and
an order of the Court compelling one NPT nuclear-weapon State to negotiate. Such an outcome
would be astonishing and would raise some pretty fundamental and searching questions about the
judicial function and the principle of effectiveness.
56. Even when pressed by the United Kingdom’s preliminary objections, the Marshall
Islands was unable to provide any more specificity to its request. The Marshall Islands’ written
response to the United Kingdom’s preliminary objections lays bare the shortcomings of their case
and goes directly to the mantle of effectiveness that is at the core of the Court’s function. They
accept that the United Kingdom would not, could not, be ordered to vote for any General Assembly
resolution. There is no course of action other than good faith participation in negotiations that they
identify. And, even here, the Court would tread at its peril, given the legal uncertainties of its
advisory opinion legacy and the factual risks of the environment into which it is asked to intrude.
The Court could ex hypothesi order the United Kingdom to be the one hand clapping but this goes
straight to the very heart of the principle of effectiveness and the judicial integrity of the Court.
57. Mr. President, Members of the Court, any judgment of the Court in this matter could
have no practical consequence. The Marshall Islands’ Application is hopelessly misconceived. If,
contrary to our other submissions, the Court concludes that the Marshall Islands Application is - 32 -
otherwise admissible and within the Court’s jurisdiction, the Court should decline to exercise that
jurisdiction in this case on the ground that to do so would be incompatible with its judicial function.
VII. Concluding observations
58. Mr. President, Members of the Court, this brings me to my concluding observations. By
every yardstick of law, the balance falls against the jurisdiction of the Court in this case. This is an
artificial case in which the United Kingdom, by dint of being the only NPT nuclear-weapon State
to have made an optional clause declaration, is sought to be enjoined to be the one hand clapping.
It is an artificial case in which the Marshall Islands waited to the exact date of the expiry of the
anti-ambush clause in the United Kingdom’s optional clause declaration to file its Application, but
then denies that its own optional clause declaration was made for purposes of the present dispute.
It is an artificial case in which the Marshall Islands has no jurisdictional basis on which to implead
the other NPT nuclear-weapon States but nonetheless rolls up their conduct in allegations directed
at the United Kingdom. It is an artificial case insofar as the Marshall Islands avers the
effectiveness of the judgment on the merits that it seeks from the Court but can find nothing more
to say than that a finding by the Court “would have the practical consequence of requiring the
United Kingdom generally to support the commencement of negotiations on nuclear
33
disarmament” . And, most significantly of all, it is an artificial case because, until the United
Kingdom learned from press reports that the Marshall Islands had filed this case with the Court, the
issue of any alleged dispute between the Marshall Islands and the United Kingdom had never once,
ever, been raised in diplomatic exchanges between the Marshall Islands and the United Kingdom.
59. Mr. President, Members of the Court, the assumption of jurisdiction in this case would
call into real question the judicial function of the Court as an arbiter of legal disputes between
States. It would raise far-reaching questions about the judicial function. It would go to the very
heart of the Court’s optional clause jurisdiction and its sustainability as a mechanism to found and
develop the compulsory jurisdiction of the Court. It would raise real questions about the wisdom
of such declarations. The systemic implications of an assumption of jurisdiction in this case are
self-evident and are manifest.
3WSMI, para. 127. - 33 -
60. Mr. President, Members of the Court, the Marshall Islands is in this case seeking to use
the contentious jurisdiction of the Court as a device to procure from the Court an advisory opinion.
This is not the function of the Court. For the reasons I have given, as well as for those to come
from Professor Verdirame and Mrs. Wells, the Court should decline to exercise jurisdiction in this
case.
61. Mr. President, Members of the Court, this brings me to the end of my submissions. I
thank you for your attention. Mr. President, after the break, may I ask you to invite
Professor Verdirame to continue the United Kingdom’s submissions.
Le PRESIDENT : Merci. La Cour entendra le professeur Verdirame après une pause de
15 minutes. L’audience est suspendue.
L’audience est suspendue de 11 h 15 à 11 h 30.
Le PRESIDENT : Veuillez vous asseoir. Je donne la parole au professeur Verdirame.
Mr. VERDIRAME: Thank you, Mr. President.
I. Introduction
1. Mr. President, Members of the Court, it is a great honour and privilege to appear before
you on behalf of the United Kingdom. With your permission, Mr. President, I propose to address
you for no more than 35 minutes.
2. I will deal with two of the United Kingdom’s preliminary objections.
3. I will begin with the objection ratione temporis. I will show that the dispute which the
Marshall Islands alleges it has with the United Kingdom is a dispute with regard to situations or
facts prior to the earliest possible date for the Court’s jurisdiction.
4. The other preliminary objection that I will address in my presentation concerns the
acceptance by the Marshall Islands of the compulsory jurisdiction of the Court only “for the
purpose of this dispute”. The consequence of having thus accepted the compulsory jurisdiction of
the Court is that, under the terms of the optional declaration of the United Kingdom, the dispute
even if justiciable must fall outside the jurisdiction of the Court. - 34 -
II. Objection ratione temporis
5. Mr. President, let me begin with the jurisdiction ratione temporis. Put quite simply, our
case is that the situations and facts giving rise to the Marshall Islands’ claim stretch back at least to
1970, and that is well beyond any of the points in time from when this Court’s jurisdiction could
have possibly begun. As I will show, this temporal characterization of the relevant situations and
facts is one that the Marshall Islands themselves adopted throughout their Application and
Memorial.
6. Mr. President, I will develop my submissions on this objection in four parts. First, I will
briefly set out the different dates discussed by the Parties in their written submissions, explain the
relevance of each of those dates, and then tease out the crucial issue on limitations ratione temporis
in this case. Secondly, I will discuss the legal principles arising from the jurisprudence of the
Permanent Court and of this Court which are relevant for our purposes. Thirdly, I will consider the
Marshall Islands’ position on the effects of the limitations ratione temporis in this case. And,
fourthly, I will explain why the dispute alleged by the Marshall Islands is clearly in respect of
situations and facts excluded from the temporal jurisdiction of the Court.
(a) Relevant dates and crucial issue
7. Let me turn to the first step in the analysis and begin by looking at the dates discussed by
the Parties in their written submissions as relevant to the scope ratione temporis of the Court’s
jurisdiction.
8. The first relevant date is 17 September 1991. Under the terms of the optional clause
declaration of the Marshall Islands, the Court has jurisdiction “over all disputes arising after
17 September 1991, with regard to situations or facts subsequent to the same date”. This date is
subsequent to the date which appears in the applicable United Kingdom declaration but, in line
with the principle of reciprocity, it is the one that matters for present purposes.
9. The second date is 30 January 1995. This is the date when the Marshall Islands became a
party to the NPT. - 35 -
10. The third date is 8 July 1996 that is the date of the Advisory Opinion of the Court on
the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons . According to the Marshall Islands, this is
the date that matters for their case under customary international law. However, the NPT was in
force at that time as between the United Kingdom and the Marshall Islands, and so, for all practical
purposes, we are really left with the two earlier dates: 17 September 1991 and 30 January 1995.
11. Mr. President, Members of the Court, the Marshall Islands do not appear to have a clear
position on which of those two dates defines the temporal jurisdiction of the Court in relation to
situations or facts giving rise to its alleged dispute. In some places, they refer to 17 September
1991 as the “critical date” , but in others they say that only post-1995 conduct can be the “source”
36
or “real cause” of the dispute .
12. As we shall see, however, the situations or facts giving rise to the dispute go back far
beyond 1991. Ultimately not much turns on whether it is pre-1995 or pre-1991 situations or facts
that are to be excluded. And so the crucial issue under this preliminary objection is really this: did
the situations or facts giving rise to this dispute alleged by the Marshall Islands occur prior to the
1990s or not? Our friends from the Marshall Islands say that they did. We say that they did not.
But we both agree that, if those situations or facts pre-date 1995, or 1991 at the earliest, the
ratione temporis limitation would be engaged and the Court’s jurisdiction excluded.
13. To be clear, Mr. President, we are not at this point concerned with the date of the dispute.
It is possible, in principle, for a dispute to arise subsequent to the critical date for jurisdiction, while
the situations or facts giving rise to it took place before that date. For the reasons developed earlier
by Sir Daniel, the view of the United Kingdom is that at no time prior to the filing by the Marshall
Islands of its Application instituting these proceedings did a dispute between the United Kingdom
and the Marshall Islands crystallize. But if, arguendo, a dispute had crystallized at some point
before the filing date, would the Court still lack jurisdiction over it as a result of the exclusion of
“situations or facts” prior to the critical date? This is the central question affecting the jurisdiction
ratione temporis of the Court in this case.
34Written Statement of Observations and Submissions of the Marshall Islands (WSMI), para. 70.
35E.g., WSMI, paras. 82 and 91.
36
E.g., WSMI, para. 87. - 36 -
(b) The Applicable Principles
14. Mr. President, I will now turn to the second part of my submissions on this preliminary
objection and consider the principles that are relevant to the exclusion ratione temporis of
situations or facts prior to the critical date. There are four principles to which I would like to draw
to your attention.
15. First, as emphasized by the Permanent Court in Phosphates in Morocco, the terms
“situations or facts” in an optional declaration are not to be given a narrow meaning. For the use of
these terms evidences the intention of the State and I quote from that Judgment “to embrace,
in the most comprehensive expression possible, all the different factors capable of giving rise to a
dispute” .7
16. Secondly, in that same case, the Permanent Court set out an approach to the
ratione temporis exclusion of situations and facts that is crucial for present purposes. The relevant
passage in the Judgment of the Court reads as follows:
“The question whether a given situation or fact is prior or subsequent to a
particular date is one to be decided in regard to each specific case, just as the question
of the situations or facts with regard to which the dispute arose must be decided in
regard to each specific case. However, in answering these questions it is necessary
always to bear in mind the will of the State which only accepted the compulsory
jurisdiction within specified limits, and consequently only intended to submit to that
jurisdiction disputes having actually arisen from situations or facts subsequent to its
acceptance. But it would be impossible to admit the existence of such a relationship
between a dispute and subsequent factors which either presume the existence or are
merely the confirmation or development of earlier situations or facts constituting the
real causes of the dispute.”38
17. Thirdly, Mr. President, the relationship between subsequent and earlier situations to
which the last part of the passage I just read refers was addressed again by this Court in the
Certain Property case. The issue there was whether the dispute had “its source or real cause” in
facts or situations which occurred in the 1990s, over which the Court would have had jurisdiction;
or whether the “source or real cause” of the dispute was conduct going back to the 1940s or 1950s,
which was outside the temporal jurisdiction of the Court. The Court observed that the dispute had
been “triggered” by conduct taking place in the 1990s. But it did not follow that the dispute related
to that conduct. When situations or facts antecedent to the critical date for jurisdiction are engaged,
3Phosphates in Morocco, Judgment, 1938, P.C.I.J., Series A/B No. 74, p. 24.
3Ibid. - 37 -
it will not be enough for a State to be able to point to merely triggering conduct that is subsequent
39
to that date. There has to be a real change, “a new situation” .
18. Fourthly, a distinction must be drawn between the “source of the rights” and “the source
of the dispute”. This distinction, first introduced by the Permanent Court of International Justice in
40
Electricity Company of Sofia and Bulgaria , was endorsed by this Court in Right of Passage as
where it was described as arising between “the situations or facts which constitute the source of the
rights claimed by one of the Parties and the situations or facts which are the source of the
dispute” .1
19. Mr. President, Members of the Court, each of these principles supports the
United Kingdom’s analysis of the effects of the ratione temporis exclusion in this case but, before
setting out that analysis, I will turn to the third part of my submission and assess the arguments of
the Marshall Islands on the time factor and in particular their attempt to rely on some of the
principles and jurisprudence I’ve just outlined.
(c) The Marshall Islands’ position in their Statement of Observations
20. In their Statement of Observations, the Marshall Islands rely, in particular, on the
distinction between sources of rights and sources of disputes. In an important passage in their
Statement, they write as follows and I will read out this passage because it is quite important for
understanding their case:
“In the present case there is no doubt that the rights under NPT Article VI that
the RMI claims vis-à-vis the United Kingdom only arose with the RMI’s accession to
the NPT, and the rights under customary international law that the RMI claims
vis-à-vis the United Kingdom only arose with the existence of the customary rule in
question. It is self-evident [they say, it is self-evident] that any facts or situations that
may have given rise to a dispute relating to such rights could only arise after those
rights had come into existence. In other words, [they continue] the RMI’s accession to
the NPT and the emergence of the customary rule brought about a ‘new situation’ in
the relationship between itself and the UK, and it is in relation to this new situation
42
that the present dispute arose.”
And that is the end of this important passage.
39
Certain Property (Liechtenstein v. Germany), Preliminary Objections, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 2005, p. 25,
paras. 48-49.
40Electricity Company of Sofia and Bulgaria, Judgment, 1939, P.C.I.J., Series A/B, No. 77.
41Right of Passage over Indian Territory (Portugal v. India), Merits, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1960, p. 35.
42
WSMI, para. 74. - 38 -
21. In other passages in their Observations, the Marshall Islands say that “the facts and
situations which constitute the real cause of the present dispute are inextricably linked” to the
accession of the Marshall Islands to the NPT or to the date of the Advisory Opinion for the
43
purposes of the customary case they also say that “only that conduct which post-dates the
RMI’s accession to the NPT in January 1995 can be the ‘source’ or ‘real cause’ of the legal dispute
between the RMI and the UK” as far as Article VI of the NPT is concerned . 44
22. Mr. President, Members of the Court, the position that emerges from these statements of
the Marshall Islands is confused and ultimately untenable. Allow me to make four points.
23. First, it is simply not true that the situations or facts giving rise to this dispute are
“inextricably linked” to the Marshall Islands’ accession to the NPT. It is of course no more than
stating the obvious to say that the dispute the Marshall Islands allege they have with the
United Kingdom is connected to the obligations they allege were breached. But the dispute does
not relate to the accession of the Marshall Islands to the NPT. The juridical fact of their accession
to the NPT can in no way be said to be in dispute between the Parties.
24. Secondly, the Marshall Islands are muddling the distinction between the source of the
rights and the source of the dispute drawn by the Permanent Court in Electricity Company and
endorsed by this Court in Right of Passage. In terms of that distinction, the accession to the NPT is
a juridical event which constitutes the source of the rights claimed by the Marshall Islands under
the NPT. Similarly, the emergence of a relevant rule of customary international law constitutes a
juridical event that pertains to the source of the rights claimed by the Marshall Islands under
customary international law. As already mentioned, it is of course true that a dispute between the
Marshall Islands and the United Kingdom over those rights and corresponding obligations could
have arisen at any point after those dates, but not before could have arisen. But those events
and the dates connected to them go to the source of the rights, not to the source of the dispute.
25. Thirdly, and following from the first and the second point, the Marshall Islands also say
that a “new situation” emerged when they became a party to the NPT or alternatively when the
rule of customary international law parallel to Article VI of the NPT was recognized by this Court
4WSMI, para. 85.
4Ibid., para. 76. - 39 -
in the 1996 Advisory Opinion. These dates are, again, relevant to the source of the rights but not
the source of the dispute. They are not the new situations to which the Court was referring in the
Certain Property case.
26. Fourthly, the Marshall Islands commit a fundamental error when they say that it is
“self-evident that any facts or situations that may have given rise to a dispute relating to such rights
could only arise after those rights had come into existence”. This statement simply begs the
question: when did the situation or facts to which the Marshall Islands’ case relates occur? The
question is not: when should they have occurred? We know the answer to that question. The fact
that in a legal sense, they had to occur after a certain date is of course no evidence that they did
occur then and not before or, indeed, that they occurred at all. David Hume famously said that it
is a fallacy to make claims about what “ought” to happen on the basis of what “happens”: one
cannot derive an “ought” from an “is”. Our friends on the other side are now experimenting with
the reverse. They want to derive an “is” from an “ought”: the situations or facts occurred
subsequent to the critical date they say because they had to occur subsequent to the critical
date. But, even without the assistance of Scottish philosophers, Mr. President, we can confidently
conclude that the inference they wish to draw is fallacious.
(d) The situations and facts giving rise to the dispute are outside the temporal jurisdiction
of the Court
27. Mr. President, Members of the Court, the Marshall Islands’ analysis of the time factor in
this case is fundamentally flawed. Their analysis does not in any way detract from the central
proposition on time that we advanced in our written statement, namely that the dispute alleged by
the Marshall Islands is in respect of situations and facts outside the temporal jurisdiction of the
Court. And, it is to this central point that I now turn in the final section of my submissions on the
preliminary objection ratione temporis.
28. It is clear from both the Application and the Memorial of the Marshall Islands that
conduct prior to the 1990s is integral to their case, and that the situation of which the
Marshall Islands complains is one which arose well before 1991. Contrary to the Marshall Islands’
later contention in their Observations, the situations and facts that pre-date the jurisdiction of the
Court were not discussed by the Marshall Islands in those pleadings “by way of historical - 40 -
background” . Rather, and as the Marshall Islands put it in the Application, the facts discussed in
the Application “are relevant for an assessment of the Respondent’s non-compliance with its
international obligations with respect to nuclear disarmament and the cessation of the nuclear arms
46
race” .
29. Mr. President, Members of the Court, these are not mere slips of the pen. Indeed, in their
Memorial the Marshall Islands summarize the case on the United Kingdom’s alleged breach of the
first limb of Article VI of the NPT as follows: “Forty-five years after entry into of force of the
NPT, the UK’s delay in fulfilling its obligation to pursue negotiations on nuclear disarmament is
manifestly unreasonable.” 47 (Emphasis added.)
30. The same concluding assessment is made in relation to the other limb of the Article VI of
the NPT. The Marshall Islands’ Memorial reads as follows: “Forty-five years after entry into of
force of the NPT, the UK’s delay in fulfilling its obligation to pursue negotiations on cessation of
the nuclear arms race is manifestly unreasonable.” 48 (Emphasis added.)
31. It is not true that the NPT entered into force between the United Kingdom and the
Marshall Islands 45 years ago. The NPT entered into force between these two States 21 years ago.
But what is true, as the Marshall Islands know and repeatedly asserted in their Application and
Memorial, is that their case is about situations and facts occurring over a far longer time frame than
the time the treaty has been in force between the Parties in fact a time frame that is more than
double the time frame in regard to which the Court could exercise its jurisdiction. Pre-1990s
situations and facts are clearly not mere historical background. They are at the heart of the
Marshall Islands’ case.
32. To circumvent their difficulties with the temporal limitations, the Marshall Islands now
accuse the United Kingdom of emphasizing “the existence of continuing conduct . . . to persuade
the Court that the facts which constitute the real cause of the dispute occurred prior to the critical
49
date of 17 September 1991” . The Marshall Islands claim that “the subject-matter of the present
45
WSMI, para. 72.
46Application Instituting Proceedings Against the United Kingdom by the Marshall Islands (AMI), para. 99.
47Memorial of the Marshall Islands (MMI), para. 213; emphasis added.
48
Ibid., para. 221; emphasis added.
49WSMI, para. 88. - 41 -
dispute is not whether the United Kingdom, by the conduct it pursued prior to the critical date, has
a committed a continuing wrongful act” . 50
33. Mr. President, Members of the Court, I would respectfully invite you to compare these
assertions in the observations of the Marshall Islands with the Introduction and Summary of the
Marshall Islands’ Application. In 18 paragraphs, introducing and summarizing the dispute, there is
no discussion of any post-1995 United Kingdom conduct which might have given rise to the
dispute. Right before alleging, for the first time, that the United Kingdom is in “continuing
breach” their words of its obligations the Marshall Islands mention three time frames. One
of these time frames is by reference to the date of the Court’s Advisory Opinion in Nuclear
Weapons and, for reasons I have discussed before, this does not relate to the situations or facts
giving rise to the dispute. The other two time frames do deal with situations and facts, but they
51
stretch well beyond 1990: into the 1980s, 1970s and 1960s . And crucially, in the same
Introduction and Summary of their dispute with the United Kingdom, found in the Application, the
Marshall Islands describe the purposes of the Application as follows: “This Application seeks to
ensure that the legal obligations undertaken 44 years ago by the UK in the context of the NPT do
indeed deliver the promised result.” 52
34. As discussed earlier, Mr. President, Members of the Court, this is the same crucial time
frame which runs through the Memorial, although of course by the time the Memorial was filed
44 years had become 45 years. This is the time frame of the alleged continuing breaches which the
Marshall Islands had clearly in mind in their Application and Memorial. The source of the dispute
is not conduct between 1995 and 2016, or even 1991 and 2016. The source or real cause of the
dispute goes back to at least 1970 and in some respects beyond. It is of course true that the United
Kingdom did not assume legal obligations vis-à-vis the Marshall Islands for the first 25 years of the
duration of the situation at the heart of their case, but this is a legal factor which cannot be
determinative of the time frame of the situations and facts with regard to which the Marshall
Islands’ case arises.
50
WSMI, para. 89.
5AMI, para. 7.
52
AMI, para. 10. - 42 -
35. In conclusion, on this preliminary objection, Mr. President and Members of the Court,
this is a dispute that, if it arises at all, it does so clearly with regard to situations or facts which are
excluded from the temporal jurisdiction of the Court because they are antecedent to the date of
accession of the Marshall Islands to the NPT and, in any event, pre-date the critical date of
17 September 1991.
III. The Marshall Islands’ acceptance of the Court’s compulsory jurisdiction was only
for the purposes of the present dispute
36. Mr. President, Members of the Court, I will now turn to the other preliminary objection
of the United Kingdom which I am to address.
37. The relevant optional declaration of the United Kingdom excludes from the jurisdiction
of the Court “any dispute in respect of which any other Party to the dispute has accepted the
compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice only in relation to or for the purpose of
the dispute”. This exclusion is consistent with the United Kingdom’s policy of supporting the
settlement of international disputes through adjudication as a general principle and strategy in the
conduct of international affairs, rather than as a mere tactical device.
38. Before looking at this preliminary objection in more detail, I will summarize briefly the
principles that govern the interpretation of optional clause declarations as settled in the
jurisprudence of this Court. And I would also emphasize, Mr. President, that these principles are
relevant to the interpretation of the temporal reservations in optional declarations discussed earlier.
39. This Court stated in the Fisheries Jurisdiction (Spain v. Canada) case that “what is
required in the first place for a reservation to a declaration made under Article 36, paragraph 2, of
the Statute, is that it should be interpreted in a manner compatible with the effect sought by the
reserving State” . What matters, as the Court put it later in the Aerial Incident case, is “the
54
intention of a declarant State, as expressed in the actual text of its declaration” . The Court has
also emphasized that a declaration under the optional clause is “a unilateral act of State
sovereignty” to which the rules on treaty interpretation in the Vienna Convention on the Law of
5Fisheries Jurisdiction (Spain v. Canada), Jurisdiction of the Court, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1998, p. 455,
para. 52.
54
Aerial Incident of 10 August 1999 (Pakistan v. India), Jurisdiction, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 2000, p. 31,
para. 44. - 43 -
Treaties “may only apply analogously to the extent compatible with the sui generis character of the
55
unilateral acceptance of the Court’s jurisdiction” .
40. Applying these principles to the present case, the United Kingdom submits that the
jurisdiction of the Court is excluded by operation of the “for the purpose of” reservation in the its
optional clause declaration. The relevant part of the declaration sought to exclude two categories
of disputes: any dispute in respect of which acceptance had been only in relation to it, as well as
any dispute in respect of which acceptance had been only for the purpose of it. The Court must
give effect to the distinction between what the acceptance relates to and what the purpose of the
acceptance might be, for such a distinction was clearly intended by the United Kingdom on the
making of its declaration.
41. It is true, Mr. President, that the acceptance of the Court’s jurisdiction by the Marshall
Islands was not only in relation to the particular dispute that it has submitted to the Court. The
terms of that acceptance are sufficiently broad to capture other potential disputes.
42. But the question whether the acceptance was only for the purpose of the dispute that the
Marshall Islands are submitting is a different one. A State may file an acceptance of the Court’s
jurisdiction which is potentially in relation to a wider category of disputes than the one it is
specifically submitting, but still do so for the purpose of submitting that particular dispute. This is
an interpretation that accords with the meaning of the word “purpose” in the Oxford English
Dictionary as: “That which a person sets out to do or attain; an object in view; a determined
intention or aim.”
43. The clearest evidence of the Marshall Islands’ acceptance of the dispute is offered by the
date of the deposit of the optional clause declaration with the Secretary-General of the United
Nations on 24 April 2013 and the date of the filing of the present Application on 24 April 2014.
On what they thought was the first good moment for filing the Application they did so. It beggars
credibility to think that this is mere coincidence of timing. On the contrary, this coincidence
suggests clearly that what the Marshall Islands set out to do with their acceptance of the Court’s
5Fisheries Jurisdiction, p. 453, para. 46. - 44 -
jurisdiction a year earlier was to file this dispute, and that the filing of this dispute was the object in
its clear view at the time of that acceptance.
IV. Conclusion
44. Mr. President, Members of the Court, this concludes my submissions on the preliminary
objections of the United Kingdom concerning, first, the jurisdiction ratione temporis of the Court;
and, second, the exclusion from the United Kingdom’s optional clause declaration of any dispute in
respect of which the other Party has accepted the jurisdiction of the Court only for the purpose of
the dispute.
45. I thank you for your attention and I would now invite you to hand the floor to my
colleague, Mrs. Jessica Wells, who will conclude the United Kingdom’s submissions today.
Le PRESIDENT : Merci, Monsieur le professeur. Je donne la parole à Mme Jessica Wells.
Mrs. WELLS:
I. Introduction
1. Mr. President, Members of the Court, may I begin by saying that it is an honour and a
privilege to appear before the Court on behalf of the United Kingdom.
2. In my submissions I shall be dealing with the fourth preliminary objection made by the
United Kingdom namely that the Application brought against the United Kingdom by the
Marshall Islands necessarily and directly engages the essential interests of States which are not
before the Court in these proceedings and that consequently, in accordance with the principle
which, by way of shorthand I shall refer to as the “essential parties” principle, this Application is
inadmissible and/or the Court lacks jurisdiction to hear it.
II. Scheme of submissions
3. Mr. President, Members of the Court, with your permission, I intend to address the Court
for about 45 minutes.
4. I will open with a few preliminary remarks about the nature and context of the Marshall
Islands’ case against the United Kingdom. Next, I will consider in some detail the scope of the - 45 -
“essential parties” principle as it has developed through the Court’s jurisprudence. Finally, I will
take the Court through the detailed allegations which have been made against the United Kingdom.
5. In a nutshell, the United Kingdom’s case is that the Court cannot decide this Application
against the United Kingdom without necessarily evaluating the lawfulness of the conduct of third
States. At a general level, the Court cannot, for instance, decide whether the United Kingdom has
negotiated in good faith without considering its conduct in the context of the behaviour of other
States. But, more particularly, the specific allegations made against the United Kingdom directly
impugn the conduct of third States. The United Kingdom therefore submits that this case falls
four-square within the “essential parties” principle.
III. Opening remarks
6. Mr. President, Members of the Court, the Marshall Islands assert, in their Statement of
Observations:
(a) That they are “challenging solely the conduct of the Respondent, claiming that that conduct is
in breach of the United Kingdom’s obligation to the Marshall Islands under NPT Article VI and
56
customary international law” ; and
(b) That “Nothing in this Application can be interpreted as requesting the Court to pronounce on
whether the other States possessing nuclear weapons, either before or not before the Court,
have also breached their obligations or to order such States to negotiate and conclude
negotiations inter se.” 57
7. With respect, this is disingenuous.
8. The Marshall Islands are manifestly not challenging solely the conduct of the United
Kingdom. They have issued eight other applications, essentially mirroring the broad claims in this
Application, against each of the States which are said to possess nuclear weapons. The fact that
only three of these States have optional declarations and that the other six applications cannot
therefore proceed, should not detract from the reality of the Marshall Islands’ position: that those
5Written Statement of Observations and Submissions of the Marshall Islands (WSMI), para. 102.
5Ibid., para. 104. - 46 -
States which possess nuclear weapons share responsibility for the performance of the obligation to
negotiate for nuclear disarmament.
9. Focusing solely on the Application as against the United Kingdom, the very nature of the
Marshall Islands’ claim inevitably involves the conduct of other States. There are three particular
aspects to this:
First, the Marshall Islands acknowledge the trite but fundamental proposition that a State
cannot conduct and conclude negotiations by itself . However, it contends that: “What is
required from the United Kingdom is, at least, a genuine effort to pursue such negotiations in
good faith. This genuine effort can and must be made irrespective of the attitude of the other
States possessing nuclear weapons.” 59 That may be the case, but it does not follow that the
Court can evaluate in a vacuum whether the United Kingdom’s efforts to negotiate are in good
faith and/or are genuine. The United Kingdom’s submission is that its conduct in such
negotiations can only be properly assessed in the context of the attitude and actions of other
States in particular those States which possess nuclear weapons and thus the Court will
inevitably be drawn into a consideration of the conduct of other States which are not before the
Court.
Secondly, the Marshall Islands make much of the assertion that the obligation to conduct
negotiations for nuclear disarmament, both under Article VI and the alleged customary law
obligation, is an obligation erga omnes . Again, this may be so, but it tells us nothing about
whether the Court has, or should exercise, jurisdiction over this case.
Thirdly, and crucially, as will be discussed in more detail, when one looks at the specific acts
and omissions which are relied upon by the Marshall Islands as evidence of the United
Kingdom’s alleged breach, it is readily apparent that those matters are precisely mirrored or
reflected in the conduct of other States in particular the United States and France. Our
friends from the Marshall Islands miss the point, when they contend that “the fact that other
States may have breached the obligation to negotiate does not and cannot exclude the
58
Written Statement of Observations and Submissions of the Marshall Islands (WSMI), para. 102.
5Ibid., para. 102.
60
Ibid., para. 105. - 47 -
possibility for the Court to assess independently whether the United Kingdom is complying
with the same obligation” . The problem is not that the other States may in theory also be in
breach of their obligations, but rather that the Court cannot decide whether or not the United
Kingdom is in breach without also necessarily evaluating the lawfulness of the conduct of other
States which have acted, or failed to act, in materially the same way.
10. Mr. President, Members of the Court, it is for these broad reasons that the United
Kingdom submits that the “essential parties” principle is engaged in this case. With these general
points in mind, I will move on to examine the scope of this principle in more detail.
IV. The “essential parties” principle
11. The “essential parties” principle is a reflection of perhaps the most fundamental tenet of
the Court’s jurisdiction. In the words of Professor Rosenne: “It is an uncontroversial principle of
general international law that no State is obliged to submit any dispute with another State or to give
an account of itself to any international tribunal. The agreement of the parties to the dispute is the
prerequisite to adjudication on the merits.” 62 (Emphasis added.)
12. The basic proposition that the Court cannot adjudicate over the legal rights of a State
which has not consented to its jurisdiction is straightforward. However, in the context of third
States which are not parties to proceedings, as Professor Amerasinghe has commented, “while the
basis in consent of the rule is clear, it is still open to discussion what the exact limits are of the
rule” .
13. Mr. President, Members of the Court, the authorities on the “essential parties” principle
will be well known to you. However, in seeking to determine the limits of the principle it is, in the
United Kingdom’s submission, necessary to focus on the precise circumstances in which the Court
has determined whether third State’s interests have or have not engaged the consent
principle. This, in our submission, provides clearer guidance on the proper limits of the principle
than seeking to identify a formulation which is expected to provide a clear dividing line and be
61Written Statement of Observations and Submissions of the Marshall Islands (WSMI), para. 105.
62Rosenne, The Law and Practice of the International Court: 1920-2005, Martinus Nijhoff, 2006, Vol. II, p. 549.
63
Amerasinghe, Jurisdiction of International Tribunals, p. 236. - 48 -
easily applicable in every case. With the Court’s permission, therefore, I will summarize the
pertinent facts and the approach of the Court, in the key cases.
14. The first case to which I would like to take the Court is the Monetary Gold case. This
case is usually taken as the origin of the principle although the Permanent Court had already
in particular in the Eastern Carelia Advisory Opinion adverted to the limits imposed by the
consent principle on the consideration of claims affecting third States.
15. As the Court will recall, in the Monetary Gold case, Italy requested the Court to
determine that any share of the monetary gold that might be due to Albania under the Paris Act
of 1946 should be delivered to Italy in partial satisfaction for damage caused to Italy by the
Albanian law of January 1945. As the Court explained:
“In order, therefore, to determine whether Italy is entitled to receive the gold, it
is necessary to determine whether Albania has committed any international wrong
against Italy, and whether she is under an obligation to pay compensation to her . . .
In order to decide such questions, it is necessary to determine whether the Albanian
law of . . . 1945, was contrary to international law. In the determination of these
questions questions which relate to the lawful or unlawful character of certain
actions of Albania vis-à-vis Italy only two States, Italy and Albania, are directly
interested. To go into the merits of such questions would be to decide a dispute
between Italy and Albania.
The Court cannot decide such a dispute without the consent of Albania . . . To
adjudicate upon the international responsibility of Albania without her consent would
run counter to a well-established principle of international law embodied in the
Court’s Statute, namely, that the Court can only exercise jurisdiction over a State with
its consent.”64
16. The Court went on to consider the relationship between the consent principle and
Article 62 of the Court’s Statute, which provides for a third State to request permission to intervene
in proceedings if it considers that it “has an interest of a legal nature which may be affected by the
decision in the case”. It was in this context that the Court gave its oft-repeated statement that:
“Albania’s legal interests would not only be affected by a decision, but would form the very
65
subject-matter of the decision.”
17. Mr. President, Members of the Court, it is respectfully submitted that the earlier passage
which I have cited is more illuminating than the rather more widely cited “very subject-matter”
6Monetary Gold Removed from Rome in 1943 (Italy v. France, United Kingdom and United States of America),
Preliminary Question, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1954, p. 32; emphasis added.
6Ibid. - 49 -
formulation. The longer passage explains the basis for the Court’s conclusion that Albania’s
interests formed the “very subject-matter” of the claim. The building blocks for that conclusion
were:
first, that in order to determine Italy’s claim, it would be necessary to consider whether
Albania’s conduct was contrary to international law;
secondly, that in determining that issue, only two States Albania and Italy were directly
interested; and
thirdly, that the Court could not adjudicate upon the international responsibility of Albania
without her consent.
18. The second case to which I would like to take the Court is the Military and Paramilitary
Activities in Nicaragua case a case which is generally regarded as confining the scope of the
“essential parties” principle.
19. The United States contended that the Nicaraguan Application was inadmissible on the
basis that it implicated third States, in particular Honduras, in the alleged unlawful activities. It
was, in particular, alleged that Honduras had permitted its territory to be used as a staging ground
for unlawful uses of force against Nicaragua. The United States argued that the adjudication of its
international responsibility for the actions alleged by Nicaragua would necessarily involve
determining the international responsibility of those third States and, in particular, whether those
States were entitled to take measures to protect themselves from unlawful uses of force. It was
further contended that Nicaragua’s request for an order that the United States “cease and desist”
from all support to any nation engaged or planning to engage in military or paramilitary actions
67
against Nicaragua would impair the rights of third States to individual and collective self-defence .
20. The Court (with respect) did not engage in any detailed analysis of the scope of the
“essential parties” principle, nor of the manner in which the legal rights and interests of the third
States were alleged to be affected by Nicaragua’s claim against the United States. It dismissed the
United States’ objections in a single paragraph, which simply:
6Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua (Nicaragua v. United States of America),
Jurisdiction and Admissibility, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1984, p. 392.
67
Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua (Nicaragua v. United States of America),
Counter-Memorial of the United States, pp. 437-438. - 50 -
(a) reiterated the “very subject-matter” formula from the Monetary Gold Judgment;
(b) noted that the Court had, in principle, merely to decide upon the submissions made by the
parties before it and that, under Article 59 of the Statute, its decision would have binding force
for those parties only;
(c) recorded that third States were free to institute separate proceedings or to employ the procedure
of intervention;
(d) stated that there was no trace, in the Statute of the Court or in the practice of international
tribunals, of an “indispensable parties” rule; and
(e) concluded that “[t]he circumstances of the Monetary Gold case probably represent the limit of
68
the power of the Court to refuse to exercise its jurisdiction” .
21. It is notable that the Court did not, in this passage, refer at all to the consent principle,
nor consider whether its judgment would require it to rule on the legal interests or rights of third
States. In essence, the Court simply confined the Monetary Gold case to its own, unusual, facts.
22. Mr. President, Members of the Court, the next case in the chronology a case on which
69
the Marshall Islands rely heavily is the Certain Phosphate Lands in Nauru case .
23. Nauru sought to establish that Australia was responsible for breaches of a number of
international obligations arising under the Trusteeship Agreement for Nauru. The Trusteeship
Agreement jointly designated Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom as the
Administering Authority, although in practice the administration of Nauru was undertaken solely
by Australia. Nauru’s claim (unlike this Application) was therefore based solely on the conduct of
Australia towards Nauru. The conduct of New Zealand and the United Kingdom was not in issue
but Australia’s position was that the acts of one State under the Trusteeship Agreement were
equally attributable to the other two Trustee States, and thus any finding of breach against Australia
would inevitably involve a decision on the international responsibility of the United Kingdom and
New Zealand. Australia, therefore, submitted that the Court could not hear the dispute in the
absence of these two States.
6Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua (Nicaragua v. United States of America),
Jurisdiction and Admissibility, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1984, p. 431, para. 88.
69
Certain Phosphate Lands in Nauru (Nauru v. Australia), Preliminary Objections, Judgment, I.C.J.
Reports 1992, p. 240. - 51 -
24. In rejecting this submission, the Court concluded that the interests of New Zealand and
the United Kingdom would not constitute the “very subject-matter of the judgment”. It appeared to
add the following gloss to the formulation of the threshold in Monetary Gold:
“In the latter case, the determination of Albania’s responsibility was a
prerequisite for a decision to be taken on Italy’s claims. In the present case, the
determination of the responsibility of New Zealand or the United Kingdom is not a
prerequisite for the determination of the responsibility of Australia, the only object of
Nauru’s claim . . .
In the present case, a finding by the Court regarding the existence or the content
of the responsibility attributed to Australia by Nauru might well have implications for
the legal situation of the two other States concerned, but no finding in respect of that
legal situation will be needed as a basis for the Court’s decision on Nauru’s claims
against Australia.”70 (Emphasis added.)
25. The approach of the majority of the Court on this issue in Nauru was strongly criticized
in the dissenting opinions of Judges Jennings, Ago and Schwebel. In the United Kingdom’s
submission, it is not apparent from the Judgment why the majority of the Court thought that the
“essential parties” principle is only engaged when a finding in relation to a third State’s legal rights
is a “prerequisite” or “needed as a basis” for the Court’s decision. The distinction between
“implications for the legal situation” of a third State and a “finding in respect of that legal
situation” is, we submit, a fine one. Moreover, if one takes a step back and recalls that the
principle is based on the overarching proposition that the Court only has jurisdiction over States
which have consented thereto, it is difficult to discern any principled basis on which the Court
might be permitted to make an incidental or a simultaneous evaluation of the lawfulness of a third
State’s conduct in the absence of that State.
26. In any event, the United Kingdom submits, for the reasons which I will elaborate shortly,
that in the present case an evaluation of the lawfulness of the conduct of third States will be
unavoidable, or “needed as a basis”, for the determination of the Marshall Islands’ claims. The
contrast between the Nauru case and the present Application can be put shortly:
(a) in Nauru, the allegations of breach arose solely from the conduct of Australia towards Nauru.
Australia was (properly) described as “the only object of Nauru’s claim”. The “legal
7Certain Phosphate Lands in Nauru (Nauru v. Australia), Preliminary Objections, Judgment, I.C.J.
Reports 1992, pp. 261-262, para. 55. - 52 -
implications” for New Zealand and the United Kingdom arose from the possibility that they
might be found jointly or secondarily liable in respect of that conduct;
(b) By contrast, in the present case the United Kingdom cannot properly be described as the only
object of the Marshall Islands’ claim. Nor does the present Application rely solely upon the
alleged conduct of the United Kingdom towards the Marshall Islands. Rather, it is premised on
the United Kingdom’s conduct in common with other States. A decision on whether that
conduct constitutes a breach of the obligation to negotiate is “needed as a basis” for the
determination of the Marshall Islands’ claim. The Court cannot limit that decision to the
United Kingdom, whatever language it uses. If the United Kingdom’s conduct is a breach, it
must follow that the materially identical conduct of other States is also a breach.
27. In the United Kingdom’s submission, therefore, even if the Nauru “gloss” is applied, it
does not defeat this preliminary objection in the present case.
28. Mr. President, Members of the Court, I now turn to the East Timor case . Here Portugal
maintained that Australia, by negotiating and concluding a treaty with Indonesia in relation to the
Timor Gap, had infringed the rights of the East Timorese people to self-determination and
sovereignty over their resources. Australia contended that the Court would not have jurisdiction to
decide this issue if it would be required to rule on, inter alia, the lawfulness of Indonesia’s entry
and continued presence in East Timor or the validity of the Timor Gap Treaty. In response,
Portugal contended that its application was concerned solely with the objective conduct of
Australia and that the rights to self-determination which Australia was alleged to have breached
were rights erga omnes. Portugal contended that these matters could be considered independently
from any consideration of the lawfulness of Indonesia’s conduct.
29. Mr. President, Members of the Court, there are strong echoes of Portugal’s approach in
the Marshall Islands’ attempt to characterize its claims as relating solely to the United Kingdom’s
obligations.
7East Timor (Portugal v. Australia), Judgment, .I.C.J. Reports 1995, p. 90. - 53 -
30. The Court upheld Australia’s preliminary objection and, again, it is illuminating to
consider all the steps in the Court’s reasoning. The relevant passage is at paragraphs 26 to 34 of
the Judgment, and can be summarized as follows:
First, the Court recalled the fundamental principle that it cannot decide a dispute between
States without the consent of those States to its jurisdiction.
Second, the Court carefully considered the approach of Portugal, which sought to separate
Australia’s behaviour from that of Indonesia, but concluded that:
“Australia’s behaviour cannot be assessed without first entering into the question why
it is that Indonesia could not lawfully have concluded the 1989 Treaty, while Portugal
allegedly could have done so; the very subject-matter of the Court’s decision would
necessarily be a determination whether, having regard to the circumstances in which
Indonesia entered and remained in East Timor, it could or could not have acquired the
power to enter into treaties on behalf of East Timor . . . The Court could not make
such a determination in the absence of the consent of Indonesia.” 72
Thirdly, the Court noted that Portugal’s assertion that the right of peoples to
self-determination was a right erga omnes was “irreproachable”, but emphasized that: “the erga
omnes character of a norm and the rule of consent to jurisdiction are two different things” and that,
whatever the nature of the obligation, the Court cannot rule on the lawfulness of the conduct of a
third State without its consent.
Fourthly, the Court stated that it “could not rule on the lawfulness of the conduct of a State
when its judgment would imply an evaluation of the lawfulness of the conduct of another State
73
which is not a party to the case” .
Fifthly, the Court acknowledged that it was not necessarily prevented from adjudicating in
circumstances where its judgment might merely “affect the legal interests of a State which is not a
party to the case” (the Article 62 threshold), but emphasized that in this case, “the effects of the
judgment requested by Portugal would amount to a determination that Indonesia’s entry into and
continued presence in East Timor are unlawful . . . Indonesia’s rights and obligations would thus
constitute the very subject-matter of such a judgment . . .” . 74
72
East Timor (Portugal v. Australia), Judgment, .I.C.J. Reports 1995, p. 102, para. 28.
7Ibid., para. 29; emphasis added.
74
Ibid., para. 34; emphasis added. - 54 -
31. Mr. President, Members of the Court, four particular points of guidance for this case can
be drawn from the East Timor Judgment:
First, in determining whether a third State’s rights “form the very subject-matter” of a
judgment, the key question is whether the effect of the judgment would constitute an evaluation of
the lawfulness of the third State’s conduct.
Secondly, it is sufficient if the evaluation of the lawfulness of the third State’s conduct would
be implied by the Court’s judgment.
Thirdly, if the third State’s interests are so affected, it is irrelevant that the obligation invoked
between the parties to the proceedings is an obligation erga omnes.
Fourthly, the Court must look beyond the way in which the claimant has formulated its case,
and consider whether in substance the application affects the interests of third States.
32. The four cases which I have just discussed all involved the potential international
responsibility of third States. But this Court has also been alive to the potential effects of
judgments on third States in the different context of land and maritime delimitations. The Marshall
Islands dismiss the delimitation cases as irrelevant for the purposes of determining the scope of the
“essential parties” principle in an “international responsibility” case . But, whilst the delimitation
cases are, of course, very different on their facts from the present case, in the United Kingdom’s
submission they are nonetheless relevant (and support the United Kingdom’s preliminary
objection). In particular, the Court has expressly reiterated the principle that jurisdiction is founded
on the consent of the parties and that it cannot therefore decide upon the legal rights of third States
who are not parties to the proceedings. And, even where the Court has undertaken a delimitation, it
has made sure that its decision does not trespass on the rights or interests of third States. In the
present case, however, the Marshall Islands have put directly in issue bilateral and shared conduct
of the United Kingdom and third States which are not before the Court and thus the effect of the
Court’s judgment in this case cannot be confined to the United Kingdom alone.
33. Mr. President, Members of the Court, the precise outer limits of the “essential parties”
principle may be unclear. However, the United Kingdom submits that, on a proper analysis, the
7WSMI, para. 107. - 55 -
authorities which I have just outlined yield the following guidance in determining whether this
Court can hear a claim which involves third States:
One: the key question is whether the effect of the Court’s judgment will be to evaluate
(expressly or by implication) whether a third State’s conduct is unlawful under international law.
Two: in considering this question, the Court must look beyond the way in which the
claimant has formulated its case and consider the substance of the claim. And,
Three: the fact that an erga omnes obligation is asserted by the applicant State is irrelevant
to the issue of whether the Court has jurisdiction.
34. Mr. President, Members of the Court, I will now move to the third section of my
presentation and examine how these guiding principles apply in the context of the Marshall Islands’
Application against the United Kingdom.
V. The application of the “essential parties” principle in the present case
35. In my opening remarks, I explained why, in broad terms, the Court cannot consider these
claims against the United Kingdom in isolation from the implications for third States and why any
determination of these claims will necessarily involve an evaluation of the lawfulness of the
conduct of other States.
36. Mr. President, Members of the Court, the Marshall Islands has set out the detail of their
case against the United Kingdom in their Memorial. As Professor Verdirame has highlighted, the
Marshall Islands rely heavily on a general pattern of conduct by the United Kingdom which
stretches back to at least the 1970s. In their statement of observations, the Marshall Islands seek to
get around the problem which Professor Verdirame has addressed by asserting that the “facts and
situations which constitute the real cause of the present dispute are inextricably linked to the RMI’s
accession to the NPT on 30 January 1995 and the Advisory Opinion of 8 July 1996”. But even the
barest of glances at the more recent allegations and omissions which are mentioned in the
Memorial is sufficient to see that the Court cannot, in these proceedings, avoid determining the
lawfulness of the conduct of at least some other States. In particular, the Marshall Islands mention
the following instances of conduct: - 56 -
One: the renewal of the UK-US Mutual Defence Agreement in 2014, which was, in any
76
event, originally entered into in 1958 and has since been renewed several times .
Two: The conclusion of a bilateral Treaty for Defence and Security Co-operation with
France and a further agreement on co-operation on nuclear warhead research concluded between
77
Prime Minister Cameron and President Hollande in January 2014 .
Three: The joint statement made with the United States of America and France at the United
Nations General Assembly High-Level Meeting on Nuclear Disarmament in September 2013, in
which the three States welcomed the increased enthusiasm around the nuclear disarmament debate
but expressed regret that energy was being directed towards initiatives such as the High-Level
78
Meeting and the Open-Ended Working Group .
Four: The joint statement, issued by the P5 Nuclear Weapon States at the conclusion of their
conference in London in February 2015, which reaffirms “that a step-by-step approach to nuclear
disarmament that promotes international stability, peace and undiminished and increased security
for all remains the only realistic and practical route to achieving a world without nuclear
weapons” . 79
Five: The joint statement, with France, dated 6 November 2012, stating that the two States
were unable to support the establishment of the Open-Ended Working Group or any outcome it
80
might produce . And,
Six: The United Kingdom’s voting record in the United Nations General Assembly, in
particular with regard to resolutions relating to the establishment of the Open-Ended Working
81 82
Group , following up the Nuclear Weapons Advisory Opinion and following up on the
83
High-Level Meetings in 2013 and 2014 .
76Memorial of the Marshall Islands (MMI), para. 61.
77MMI, paras. 62-64.
78
MMI, para. 90.
79
MMI, para. 81.
80
MMI, para. 77.
81MMI, para. 76.
82MMI, para. 82.
83MMI, para. 91. - 57 -
37. Mr. President, Members of the Court, some of these allegations directly concern bilateral
conduct between the United Kingdom and other States: all of them directly impugn the conduct of
third States. Consequently a determination by the Court that the United Kingdom is in breach of its
obligations to negotiate by reason of this conduct cannot be confined to the United Kingdom alone.
On the contrary, it would inevitably constitute an evaluation of the lawfulness of the conduct of, at
the very least, the United States of America and France, as counterparties to the bilateral conduct,
as co-authors of the joint statements and as joint participants in the voting patterns in the United
Nations.
38. To be clear: this is not a case like Nauru, where it is alleged that one State has engaged
in conduct which might be attributable to a third State. Nor is it a case like Nicaragua, where
allegations of unlawful conduct of a different nature are made against third States. In this
Application, third States particularly the United States of America and France are directly
implicated in the unlawful conduct alleged against the United Kingdom.
VI. Conclusion
39. Mr. President, Members of the Court, for the reasons which I have elaborated, in order to
decide this Application against the United Kingdom, the Court will necessarily have to evaluate the
lawfulness of the conduct of other States which are not before it in these proceedings. Whether this
is expressed on the basis that such evaluations will be “needed as a basis” for the Court’s decision
or will “form the very subject-matter” of its judgment, it is clear that the issue of the lawfulness of
the conduct of third States the essential interests of those third States are directly and
inevitably engaged. Bearing in mind, as the Court must, the essential principle that a State cannot
(in the words of Professor Rosenne) be required “to give an account of itself” unless it consents to
the Court’s jurisdiction, it must follow, in the United Kingdom’s respectful submission, that the
Court lacks jurisdiction to hear this Application and/or that the Application is inadmissible.
40. Mr. President, Members of the Court, that concludes the United Kingdom’s first round
submissions in this case. I thank you for your attention. - 58 -
Le PRESIDENT : Merci, Madame Wells. Voilà qui met un terme au premier tour de
plaidoiries du Royaume-Uni. La Cour se réunira de nouveau en cette affaire le vendredi
11 mars 2016 à 15 heures pour entendre les Iles Marshall en leur premier tour de plaidoiries.
Je vous remercie. L’audience est levée.
L’audience est levée à 12 h 35.
___________
Audience publique tenue le mercredi 9 mars 2016, à 10 heures
Audience publique tenue le mercredi 9 mars 2016, à 10 heures, au Palais de la Paix, sous la présidence de M. Abraham, président, en l'affaire des Obligations relatives à des négociations concernant la cessation de la course aux armes nucléaires et le désarmement nucléaire (Iles Marshall c. Royaume-Uni) - Exceptions préliminaires