Suchergebnisse

The period of an international tribunal's temporal jurisdiction is the span of time during which an act must have occurred before the tribunal may consider if the act breached an obligation. There are many questions concerning this particular aspect of an international tribunal's jurisdiction. Does a tribunal have power over acts that occurred after the entry into force of the obligation allegedly breached but before the tribunal's jurisdiction was accepted? What about acts that began before the tribunal's jurisdiction was accepted but continued after? To what extent can acts before the period of the tribunal's jurisdiction affect its decision on whether or not there is a breach through acts afterwards? This text examines these questions in depth.

AbstractThe success of an international claim impugning a series of State acts, or a 'composite act', straddling the date a treaty comes into force can depend on the weight the tribunal gives to the elements of the composite act occurring before that date. Recent bilateral investment treaty decisions highlight ambiguities on this critical issue. One tribunal practically ignored State acts occurring before the treaty came into force in finding that there had been no breach of the treaty, whereas another tribunal considered those previous acts in reaching the opposite conclusion. This paper identifies steps to ensure future tribunals give consistent weight to the elements of a composite act occurring before a treaty comes into force.