Information Material
The Guide to Proceedings before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea intends to provide practical information as to the manner in which cases are instituted and conducted before the Tribunal. It gives a brief presentation of the Tribunal and sets out the principal features of contentious proceedings on the merits, incidental proceedings, prompt release applications, requests for the prescription of provisional measures and advisory proceedings. Examples of pleadings and model forms are annexed to the guide. An Addendum on contentious cases before the Seabed Disputes Chamber is available here.
The English and French text of the Guide has recently been updated, including the addition of a chapter dedicated to contentious proceedings before the Seabed Disputes Chamber. The Guide is available in the official languages of the Tribunal, English and French. Previous versions of the Guide are also available in Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish. The Guide is issued by the Registry for information purposes and is available on the website. Hard copies may be obtained from the Press Office of the Tribunal.
The Digest of Jurisprudence of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea makes available to academics, practitioners and students summaries of cases brought before the Tribunal as well as excerpts from the Tribunal’s decisions.
It is made up of two parts: the first consists of a short presentation of each case; the second sets out excerpts from the Tribunal’s jurisprudence organized by topic.
So as to retain as much of the Tribunal’s original language as possible, the Tribunal’s decisions are reported in the present tense in the first part devoted to the case summaries.
The Digest of Jurisprudence has been prepared and published by the Registry and in no way engages the responsibility of the Tribunal; in particular, any information provided on Judgments, Orders, and Advisory Opinions is not authoritative, cannot be relied upon in opposition to the actual wording of the decisions or in any other way and does not constitute an interpretation of the decisions.
The first version of the Digest of Jurisprudence was published in 2016 on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Tribunal. The Digest of Jurisprudence has been updated to include the jurisprudence of the Tribunal up to January 2021, in order to mark the 25th anniversary of the Tribunal.
On 18 March 2017, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea held a symposium entitled “ITLOS at 20: Looking into the future”. This symposium concluded the series of events on the occasion of the Tribunal’s 20th Anniversary. This volume reproduces the statements presented during the symposium and the question and answer sessions in the order in which they were delivered and in their original language.
Timeline from 1 October 1996, when the Judges convened in Hamburg for their first meeting, to the present day.