The LL.M. Subject Forum is an event held at the beginning of each academic year to help current LL.M. students decide which courses to take. Course convenors for each course discuss for approximately 10 minutes the goals and objectives of their course. Potential applicants to the LL.M. viewing this video must bear in mind the students who were in the audience were intended as the target audience. Most of the courses offered each year will run in subsequent years, but not necessarily all of them. Please see The LL.M. Curriculum for more information.

Transcript

I’m here to talk about Settlement of International Disputes. My name is Michael Waibel and I will co-teach this course together with Professor James Crawford. Settlement of International Disputes is concerned with the binding adjudication of disputes internationally between two or more entities, at least one of which is a state party. So the focus of this course is going to be on the most colourful and the most fun part of dispute resolution internationally – not mediation, not negotiation, not settlement – adjudication. Fifty years ago, disputes at the international level rarely reached the few existing international courts and tribunals at the time. Now, hardly a day goes by without new developments. The Yukos case before the European Court of Human Rights, the Kosovo Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice, challenges against the Uruguayan and Australian tobacco labelling regimes in investor state arbitration or an environmental dispute about Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean between the United Kingdom and Mauritius.

So, you see, international litigation is no longer a niche area. It drives the growth of international law. What this class is designed to do is to give you a toolbox for use across a whole range of substantive areas of international law that will stay with you for the rest of your careers. International law over the course of your careers will change in ways that are difficult to predict today, but this course will be your pathfinder with a long half-life across international law as a whole. You will be able to read up on substantive areas of international law pretty quickly if a client approaches you in the future, but what you will find difficult in the midst of your practice is to build the foundations of how and when international rights and obligations translate into effective remedies. So the approach this class takes is to focus on commonalities of dispute settlement internationally that apply in a boundary dispute just like in a human rights case, in an investment arbitration just like in an environmental dispute.

Taking the position of a potential claimant, the first question we ask is, does any international forum have jurisdiction over the dispute? If you fail to find a suitable forum for your client, that’s simply the end of your case. In practical terms, a breach of a substantive rule of international law is simply not enough. You need to find a remedy. So this class will encourage you to think conceptually as well as strategically about how to fashion remedies for breaches of international law. Which court has jurisdiction? Is a claim admissible? Can we enforce the judgment? Where do we find assets which we can attach? Can we request provisional measures to safeguard our client’s position?

Now, if you’re planning to go into practice in an international law firm, sooner or later you will encounter some of these issues, in one shape or another. If you specialise in the academic side of international law, you wouldn’t want to miss this course because of its cross-cutting nature that applies in every issue area. International law, more than other areas of law, grows through its cases. This is where the action is. For those of you who are primary litigators, this course is an ideal complement to the international commercial litigation course by Professor Fentiman, who focuses on disputes between private parties before the English courts. This class, in contrast, will focus on disputes between at least one state party and where international law is part of the applicable law.

I have brought a few handouts, so those of you who are seriously thinking about taking this course please take one of them. So this handout sets out the topics that we’re going to discuss in the course of the coming academic year. Professor Crawford will be teaching all of the Michaelmas term. He will start off with some of the history of international dispute settlement, and then go on to two major topics: jurisdiction and admissibility. He will conclude the Michaelmas term on the notions of justiciability and arbitrability. In Lent term, you will have the first lectures with me on applicable laws and then Professor Crawford returns, speaking first about provisional measures and then going on to remedies and challenges in international dispute settlement. The final part will focus on denial of justice and the relationships between different international courts and tribunals and the question of whether international tribunals give rise to the fragmentation of international law.

Now, in addition to these lectures, there will be five to six seminars over the course of the academic year. They will be arranged on an ad hoc basis to give you a glimpse into the heart of ongoing and recent international cases, and with Professor Crawford you will have one of the most experienced counsel as your guide through these cases.

Just a few housekeeping matters. If you are interested in this option, you can write a thesis in lieu of the three-hour exam, but you should approach either Professor Crawford or myself soon if this is something that interests you. The exam in this course will be a closed book exam. Importantly, there is not going to be a lecture tomorrow. Professor Crawford sends his apologies, the first lecture will be on October 13th, so not tomorrow. The readings for this course are set out in your handout. The important point to mention is that there is one text that covers the whole range of this course, but it’s only at an introductory level. That’s the book by Merrills, the fifth edition of which was published in 2011. So you will need to complement that by a wide range of additional readings. You have some of these texts in your handout and others will be indicated in detailed handouts for each lecture.

Let me just conclude. This is a very exciting time to be an international lawyer and this course will take you to the trenches. Regardless of whether you are more academically inclined or a practitioner, this will be a course that stays with you for a long time. From the wide range of cases – human rights, investment, arbitration etc – we will distil common elements, to questions of jurisdiction, admissibility and procedure. If, in five years’ time, someone approaches you to represent an employee of the United Nations before an international administrative tribunal, you will be able to hit the ground running because you’ve done this course. Let me just take one or two questions now if there are any. I hope and Professor Crawford hopes to see many of you on the course. Thanks a lot.

Added on 05/10/2011.

Last modified on 11/10/2011

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