Enhancing the Effectiveness of Procedures of International Dispute Settlement

Enhancing the Effectiveness of Procedures of International Dispute Settlement* Sir Arthur Watts* L Introduction Let me begin by stating the obvious: there is no single set of rules and practices governing the international judicial process — for there is no single such process. Instead there are many tribunals, each with its own procedures for settling disputes, often set out in the form of a Statute supplemented by more specific Rules of Court. The procedures of those different tribunals reflect their very different characteristics, such as their world-wide, or regional scope; or their purely bilateral nature; or their character as standing tribunals or as ad hoc tribunals; or the limited, or unlimited, subject-matter of the disputes which may be brought before them. While there is, of course, much procedural bor- rowing of practices by one tribunal from others and while certain prin- ciples may find expression in the procedures of many tribunals, yet one cannot speak of "international rules of procedure". Questions can in practice only be pursued on a tribunal-by-tribunal basis. There is a further problem about the topic I am addressing, and it is perhaps more fundamental. Its implication is that inter-state judicial settlement procedures are ineffective — or at least not as effective as * This paper was presented originally at the International Symposium "The International Dispute Settlement System" organized on the occasion of the moving of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea into its new building by the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and In- ternational Law in Hamburg, 23 September 2000. 21 J.A. FroweinandR. Wolfrum (eds.), Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law, Volume 5, 2001, 21-39. © 2001 Kluwer Law International. Printed in The Netherlands.© 2001 Kluwer Law International. Printed i

Enhancing the Effectiveness of Procedures of International Dispute Settlement

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