The Faculty is delighted to welcome the news that Fabian Eichberger's paper entitled 'Informal Communications to the International Court of Justice in Cases of Non-Appearance' has won the Rosalyn Higgins Prize 2022.
The Rosalyn Higgins Prize is awarded annually by the Brill journal The Law & Practice of International Courts and Tribunals for an article on the International Court of Justice. The prize is named in honour of H.E. Rosalyn Higgins, GBE, KC, former President of the International Court of Justice and alumna of Girton College, University of Cambridge. This year's jury included Judge Neeru Chadha (International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea), Professor Giuseppe Nesi (University of Trento, Member-elect of the International Law Commission), Professor Mónica Pinto (Emerita, University of Buenos Aires), and Professor August Reinisch (University of Vienna, Member of the International Law Commission).
Fabian's paper develops a legal framework that suggests how the ICJ could best address informal communications by states that decide not to participate in proceedings. In recent years, states have frequently decided to abstain in parts of proceedings before the Court. This can put the ICJ in an awkward position as it has to strike a fair balance between the procedural rights of the participating and the non-participating party, neither of which is supposed to benefit from the situation. The article will be published open-access in the upcoming issue of The Law & Practice of International Courts and Tribunals. The prize comes with a €1.000 Brill book voucher.
It genuinely humbles me to receive the prize in [Dame Rosalyn Higgins'] name Fabian Eichberger
In response to the award, Fabian said "I am extremely grateful to have been awarded the Rosalyn Higgins Prize 2022. Dame Rosalyn Higgins is an inspiration to international lawyers worldwide and especially so at Cambridge, her alma mater. It genuinely humbles me to receive the prize in her name and I hope that my research will contribute to resolving a thorny issue of public international law. I am extremely grateful to the unique intellectual community at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law and my supervisor, Dr Fernando Bordin. Without them I would not have been able to write this paper. My warmest congratulations go to Juan Pablo Leon Acevedo who has also been awarded the prize this year."