The Scope of Compulsory Jurisdiction and Exceptions Thereto under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea

The establishment of a compulsory dispute settlement mechanism in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is intended to be the guarantor of the proper application of the convention. Yet the decisions of courts and tribunals seized pursuant to the procedures under Section 2 of Part XV of UNCLOS are in many regards difficult to reconcile and in some regards unable to form the basis for a jurisprudence constante. This article examines on an empirical basis the scope and limits of the compulsory dispute settlement mechanism under UNCLOS, as applied by international courts and tribunals during a period of twenty years since the first decision in the Southern Bluefin Tuna case until the recent decision on preliminary objections in the Dispute Concerning Delimitation of the Maritime Boundary between Mauritius and Maldives in the Indian Ocean.