Marine Legal Means Of Dispute Settlement Is A Comparative Study

The adoption and the entry into force of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, known as the"Ocean Charter", laid the legal foundation for the establishment of the modern marine order, and provided the legal basis for the settlement of maritime legal disputes and for the delimitation. States Parties shall settle any dispute between them concerning the interpretation or application of this Convention by peaceful means, pursuant to PART XV of the Convention, and where no settlement has been reached by recourse to the peaceful means of their own choice (political means in most of the time), the said disputes shall be submitted to the court or tribunal having jurisdiction under Article 287, including the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the International Court of Justice, an arbitral tribunal constituted in accordance with Annex VII and a special arbitral tribunal constituted in accordance with Annex VIII. The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, established in 1996, is a whole new permanent international judicial body specializing in maritime legal affairs in line with the requirement of the new Convention. The similarity and the difference between the tribunal and the International Court of Justice and arbitral tribunals is the main concern of this article.Starting with the practices of the ITLOS since its foundation, this article analyzed the unique role the tribunal played in handling the Prompt Release of vessels and crews and the Provisional measures issues, and on the basis of which, raised the singleness of the type of the cases and the lack of practices in dealing with substantive issues problem. The article examined the maritime delimitation cases handled by the International Court of Justice and arbitral tribunals after the establishment of the ITLOS and compared their merit and demerit in dealing with maritime legal issues and summarized the disadvantages of the tribunal in historical and legal planes and the advantages in its composition and jurisdiction aspects comparing with the ICJ, also its disadvantages in controllability and flexibility in proceedings and on the other hand the advantages in its professional and authoritative in comparison with the arbitral tribunals. On reviewing the dilemma China has been facing concerning the maritime delimitation with her neighboring countries and the possible explanations for her refusal to settle these problems through legal channels, the article pointed out the inadvisableness of the said refusal as long as the international tribunals might provide us with backup plans and extra chips in negotiations, and proposed the possibility of using the international tribunals in the future dispute settlement process.