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The M/V “Norstar” Case (Panama v. Italy) (ITLOS)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2019

Richard Collins
Richard Collins*
Affiliation:
Lecturer in International Law, Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin.
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Extract

On April 10, 2019, the International Tribunal of the Sea (ITLOS) gave judgment in the M/V “Norstar” (Panama v. Italy) case. This was the first time an international tribunal had ruled directly on the principle of freedom of navigation in international waters. Specifically, ITLOS found (by fifteen votes to seven) that by arresting and detaining the Panamanian-flagged M/V “Norstar”, Italy had violated Article 87(1) of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). In doing so, the Tribunal arguably relied on a quite expansive understanding of the exclusive flag state jurisdiction principle as set out in Article 92 UNCLOS—a point that was argued forcefully in a seven-judge dissenting opinion. Below, I will briefly outline the background to the case before setting out the central aspects of the judgment and considering further this point of contention surrounding the permissibility of nonflag prescriptive measures in international waters.

Type
International Legal Documents
Information
International Legal Materials , Volume 58 , Issue 4 , August 2019 , pp. 673 - 737
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 by The American Society of International Law 

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References

ENDNOTES

1 M/V “Norstar” (Panama v. Italy), Case No. 25, Judgment of April 10, 2019, https://www.itlos.org/fileadmin/itlos/documents/cases/case_no.25/Judgment/C25_Judgment_10.04.pdf [hereinafter Norstar].

2 Id. ¶ 469(1).

3 Although ostensibly within the exclusive economic zones of the respective countries, bunkering of commercial vessels falls outside of the activities under coastal state jurisdiction, such that traditional high seas freedoms will continue to apply (under Article 58(1) UNCLOS).

4 M/V “Norstar” (Panama v. Italy), Case No. 25, Preliminary Objections, Judgment of November 4, 2016, https://www.itlos.org/fileadmin/itlos/documents/cases/case_no.25/Preliminary_Objections/Judgment/C25_Judgment_04.11.16_orig.pdf.

5 Id. ¶¶ 109–33; restated in Norstar, supra note 1, ¶ 101.

6 Norstar, supra note 1, ¶ 153.

7 Id. ¶¶ 162, 166.

8 Id. ¶ 186 (emphasis added).

9 Id. ¶¶ 216, 222–24.

10 M/V “Virginia G” (Panama/Guinea-Bissau), Case No. 19, Judgment of April 14, 2014, https://www.itlos.org/fileadmin/itlos/documents/cases/case_no.19/judgment_published/C19_judgment_140414.pdf.

11 Norstar, supra note 1, ¶ 219.

12 Id. ¶ 226.

13 Id. ¶ 231.

14 Id. ¶ 238.

15 Id. ¶ 241, referring to M/V “Louisa” (Saint Vincent and the Grenadines v. Kingdom of Spain), Case No. 18. Judgment of May 28, 2013, ¶ 137, https://www.itlos.org/fileadmin/itlos/documents/cases/case_no_18_merits/published/C18_Judgment_280513.pdf.

16 Norstar, supra note 1, ¶ 243.

17 Id. ¶¶ 246–308.

18 Id. ¶ 370.

19 As the Tribunal notes, the exclusive flag state jurisdiction principle under Article 92 is “an inherent component of the freedom of navigation” under Article 87. Id. ¶ 225.

20 Id. (emphasis added).

21 See arguments of Arron N. Honniball, The Exclusive Jurisdiction of Flag States: A Limitation on Pro-active Port States?, 31 Int'l. J. Marine & Coastal L. 499 (2016), especially references cited at nn. 94–95. For the clearest articulation of this view, see Douglas Guilfoyle, The High Seas, in The Oxford Handbook of the Law of the Sea 203, at 209–10 (Donald R. Rothwell, Alex G. Oude Elferink, Karen N. Scott & Tim Stephens eds., 2015).

22 M/V “Norstar” (Panama v. Italy), Case No. 25, Joint Dissenting Opinion of Judges Cot, Pawlak, Yanai, Hoffmann, Kolodkin and Lijnzaad and Judge ad hoc Treves, April 10, 2019, ¶ 19, https://www.itlos.org/fileadmin/itlos/documents/cases/case_no.25/Judgment/C25_DO_joint.pdf [hereinafter Norstar Dissent].

23 SS Lotus (France v. Turkey), Judgment, 1927 PCIJ (ser. A) No. 10.

24 Id. ¶¶ 64–65 (“In virtue of the principle of the freedom of the seas … no State may exercise any kind of jurisdiction over foreign vessels upon them …. But it by no means follows that a State can never in its own territory exercise jurisdiction over acts which have occurred on board a foreign ship on the high seas.”) (emphasis added). See further commentary of Arron N. Honniball, Freedom of Navigation Following the M/V “Norstar” Case, The Blog of the K.G. Jebsen Centre for the Law of the Sea (June 4, 2019), https://site.uit.no/jclos/2019/06/04/freedom-of-navigation-following-the-m-v-norstar-case/.

25 Norstar Dissent, supra note 22, ¶ 26.

26 Id. ¶ 36.

27 Norstar, supra note 1, ¶ 207.

28 The “Enrica Lexie” Incident (Italy v. India), Case No. 24, Order of 24 August 2015, ¶¶ 39, 40, https://www.itlos.org/fileadmin/itlos/documents/cases/case_no.24_prov_meas/24_published_texts/2015_24_Ord_24_Aug_2015-E.pdf. See also Honniball, supra note 21, at 518.