This essay examines the 2013 Decision by the International Court of Justice interpreting its 1962 Judgment in the Temple of Preah Vihear case between Cambodia and Thailand, situating the more recent decision in the context of the Court's evolving role in Asia. Only eight Asian states have accepted the compulsory jurisdiction of the Court; only nine have ever appeared before it. The narrowness of the recent decision is of interest in part because of the modest role it ascribes to judicial institutions, but also for what this modesty heralds for the Court's status in Asia. A key conclusion is that Asian states are likely to retain a general preference for bilateral resolution of disputes. For smaller disputes, however, especially those concerning subjects that cannot be divided or traded—such as a temple (and, as we shall see, an island)—the ICJ may play an important role.

The global community faces the challenge of dealing with movements in opposite directions: the emphasis on decolonization and self-determination in the postwar world has encouraged the building of barriers and boundaries between jurisdictions, while globalization has encouraged the breaking or transcending of the same. This paper focuses on the legal protection of private economic rights in the transnational arena by considering the regulation of transnational economic relationships at three different levels: (a) where a party's rights are not regulated or governed by any contract; (b) where there is a contract between the parties; and (c) where a foreign investor looks to protect its investment against unlawful interference by a host state. It concludes with some thoughts on what might lie ahead and suggests possible solutions to the issues and challenges faced.

This paper focuses on the role of ASEAN in maintaining peace and security in Southeast Asia. It uses the Temple of Preah Vihear dispute as a case-study to examine both ASEAN's successes and limitations in dealing with a crisis that threatened regional peace. The paper first examines ASEAN's initial response to the conflict and highlights a period of inaction that followed. It then traces ASEAN's renewed efforts to manage the conflict and assesses ASEAN's potential to resolve the dispute. The paper concludes that ASEAN did a remarkable job in facilitating negotiations and was instrumental in preventing the conflict from further escalation. It argues, however, that ASEAN's role remains limited: in particular, problems of institutional design reduce its effectiveness in managing conflicts and settling disputes. The paper concludes by making several suggestions to increase the effectiveness of the organization in maintaining regional peace and security.

With the rapid advent of globalization, international law has come to expand into new areas which had traditionally been under the exclusive domain of municipal law. As a result, problems concerning interaction between the international and domestic legal orders have become increasingly common. Specifically, difficulties have arisen concerning the implementation of international law decisions into the domestic legal order. This paper examines this problem in three different areas: the process of incorporation of international treaties into the domestic legal order; the issue of giving effect to Security Council resolutions in domestic law; and the issue of the implementation within the domestic legal system of judgments of international courts and tribunals. The paper concludes that, in an age of the emergence of a global community as a matter of socioeconomic reality, the two legal orders should work together to promote common public policy, paying due respect to the decisions of international institutions.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) has an ambitious agenda and could radically reshape trade in the Asia-Pacific. At the same time, TPP obligations have the potential to significantly restrict the ability of governments to regulate in the interests of public health. This paper examines the impact the TPP could have on two areas of public health regulation—tobacco control and access to medicines. It concludes that a number of legitimate concerns arise from the known content of the TPP, that the inclusion of a general health exception would be the preferable means of safeguarding the regulatory space of governments in relation to public health, and that the United States’ proposals for stronger intellectual property protections be resisted. With negotiations shrouded in secrecy, TPP parties’ desires to promote international trade and investment must not overshadow the need of governments to be able to implement sensible and effective public health policy.

This paper revisits the ICJ's original 1962 Decision in the case of the Temple of Preah Vihear, examining its legacy in the light of the 2013 Decision. The 2013 Decision, when read in isolation from the 1962 Judgment, does not provide any indication that the original Judgment was controversial. In contrast to the unanimous Decision of the Court in 2013, in 1962 three of the judges appended Dissenting Opinions. They dissented because they could not agree with the majority that the Temple was located in Cambodia. The 1962 Judgment was controversial because it relied on an inaccurate sketch map and deduced Thai acquiescence from a single photograph of a brief meeting between a dead Thai prince and a dead French official. The unanimous decision of the 2013 Court therefore appears to be to a conscious decision by the Court to reinforce a Judgment that was, in retrospect, evidentially weak.

In this paper I address the justifications and methods adopted by scholars and international judges for the identification of jus cogens norms. More specifically, I examine how the approaches taken by these two subsidiary sources of international law relate. In so doing, I seek to highlight and develop a clearer understanding of why, in spite of considerable scholarly and judicial attention, more progress on the doctrine of jus cogens identification has not been made. The analysis covers assessment of the practice of interaction, but also its underpinnings, which include the implications of jus cogens identification for the legitimacy of international courts. I argue that scholars have focused on justificatory theory at the expense of methodological considerations and that this has limited the scope for the development of a useful discourse with international judicial bodies on matters of jus cogens identification.

This paper revisits the controversy of Judge Sir Muhammad Zafrulla Khan's recusal from the South West Africa cases using new information from the National Archives in Australia, India, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, including an unpublished manuscript written by the Australian judge and the Court's President Sir Percy Spender. Sir Percy's manuscript, which addresses the “recusal” controversy and the 1966 Decision, raises uncomfortable questions about the politics of international law within the Court in the 1960s. In many ways, Judge Zafrulla's struggle with Sir Percy at the ICJ can be analogized to the struggle of non-European peoples to self-determination. The internal “legal” struggle within the Court paralleled the larger “political” struggle outside the Court. Zafrulla would win the struggle, however, when as President of the Court during the 1971 Advisory Opinion on Namibia he would contribute to decolonization, a possibility he foresaw when he was forced to recuse himself.

This paper exposes the limited perspective that we have over the problem of jurisdiction in emergencies. In the classic theory of emergency powers, sovereign control over borders is assumed, and jurisdictional problems are acknowledged when threats come from outside those borders or when they are handled outside. However, what characterizes many emergencies is not the exercise of sovereign jurisdiction but rather contestations over problems of jurisdiction and competing jurisdictional claims. To illustrate the need for a broader perspective over emergencies’ jurisdictional politics, this paper tells a multilayered story about a successful intervention by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in one of Myanmar's natural disasters (Nargis 2008). ASEAN's role in its Member State's disaster should be understood in view of its unique regional solution to the jurisdictional problem that this disaster raised—the problem of access by foreign aid to a domestic area affected by a natural disaster.

This paper examines the legal consequences of the acquisition of a new nationality for the right of return of Palestinian refugees. The paper argues that since the right of return is independent of refugee status, the cessation of the latter should not necessarily abrogate the former. By examining the underpinnings of the right of return to one's own country, especially the link between the individual and her territory, this paper argues that this link is somehow weakened in a situation of naturalization in a different country. However, this weakening of the link should not automatically lead to the deprivation of rights. The circumstances that lead refugees to leave their country of origin, the circumstances preventing their return, and the decisions made by the individuals in view of their available options, should be examined.

This paper discusses the possible uses of heritage listing under UNESCO for the promotion of broader political and social agendas by minority groups. The paper uses as a case-study the “Buddhist Chanting of Ladakh: recitation of sacred Buddhist texts in the trans-Himalayan Ladakh region, Jammu and Kashmir, India”. This heritage showcases issues of Tibetan autonomy (both within India and more broadly), relationships between Tibetan and Muslim cultures, and regional autonomy and accommodation of cultural minorities in the Indian state. There are many uses of listing Ladakhi heritage, ranging from listing as a means for autonomy of the Ladakhi, to listing as an instrument of domination, or even geographical control. I argue that heritage listing is not as “apolitical” as normally thought of, and it can be used as a mechanism to both benefit or harm minority groups and the advocacy of their claims within or against the territorial state.

At the Kampala Review Conference in 2010, the adoption of the amendments to the Rome Statute laid the groundwork for the eventual prosecution of the crime of aggression. China, a non-State Party to the International Criminal Court, has articulated its concerns regarding the Court's jurisdiction over the crime of aggression in legal terms. This paper examines the Chinese concerns regarding the role of the Security Council in the determination of an act of aggression and the definition of aggression primarily from a legal perspective. It argues that China has hovered back and forth between two conflicting legal positions on these issues during different periods in history according to its policy preference. This paper also considers the concerns of China from a policy perspective before concluding that the crime of aggression should not be regarded as an insurmountable barrier preventing China's accession to the ICC in years to come.

Learning from past atrocities, Cambodia has taken positive steps to ensure that future international crimes may be adequately prosecuted through its ratification of the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002. However, an effective accountability mechanism and deterrence for any future crimes requires more than simply joining the ICC. There is a growing consensus that Member States should adopt the ICC crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes as part of their domestic law, as the absence of legislation may result in an inability to prosecute under the principle of complementarity. Cambodia has followed this trend and enacted implementing legislation into its new 2009 Cambodian Criminal Code (CCC). Scrutinizing the enacted international crimes provisions in the CCC, it becomes apparent that some modifications and reform to the current Cambodian criminal statutes are necessary in order to comply with the complementarity principle in the ICC Statute.

Tensions between watercourse states are likely to escalate in the absence of effective legal frameworks by which to evaluate the impacts of large-scale unilateral water projects. Conscious of the need for such a framework, the lower Mekong River Basin States have developed the 1995 Mekong Agreement and related procedures for prior notification and consultation. The Xayaburi Hydropower Project constitutes the first project on the mainstream of the Mekong River that has been submitted to the consultation procedures under the 1995 Mekong Agreement. An analysis of the Xayaburi Project shows that both the design and implementation of the consultation process might be improved. The need to strengthen this process is particularly pertinent due to the numerous plans to further exploit the hydropower potential of the Mekong River and its tributaries. Additionally, examination of the prior consultation process under the Mekong Agreement offers valuable lessons for other international watercourses facing similar challenges.

The Right of Passage case flagged off India's adversarial tryst with international law, in which Portugal had argued for the validity of a 1779 treaty signed with the Marathas. India had denied its existence and interpretation. Within the UN Charter, India's subsequent assimilation of Goa constituted illegal invasion, with which the Indian Supreme Court disagreed. Subsequently, Britain deployed its colonial de jure distinction by refusing to recognize India's control of Goa. However, for Nehru, Goa was “a symbol of decadent colonialism trying to hold on”. The Right of Passage case profoundly shaped India's post-colonial foreign policy by coupling India's body politic with its judiciary. Since then, the Lotus case continues to enamour the Indian government. This paper considers the views of the Indian government, judiciary, and publicists to examine whether India has been able to advance a specific approach to international law.