Beagle Channel Arbitration - The Court

The Court

The British Crown had previously in 1902 and 1966 acted as arbitrator between Chile and Argentina (see Arbitration 1902 here), but, given the growing Falkland Islands sovereignty dispute between Argentina and the United Kingdom, the parties agreed to change the statutory framework of the Arbitration.

The Arbitration Agreement of 1971 stipulated:

• the names of the 5 judges appointed (see the preamble of the Arbitration Agreement):
  • Hardy Cross Dillard (United States of America)
  • Gerald Fitzmaurice (United Kingdom)
  • André Gros (France)
  • Charles D. Onyeama (Nigeria)
  • Sture Petrén (Sweden)
• the region where the court was to define the borderline (A polygon ABCDEF, known as "Hammer", see paragraph 4 of Article 1 of the Arbitration Agreement)
• that the final decision would be submitted to the British Crown, which was then to recommend acceptance or rejection of the award of the court but not to modify it (Article XIII of the Arbitration Agreement)
• that the Court of Arbitration should reach its conclusions in accordance with the principles of international law.
• that each of the Parties should defray its own expenses and one half of the expenses of the Court of Arbitration and of Her Britannic Majesty's Government in relation to the Arbitration.

In this way the United Kingdom did not have any influence on the judgement: the procedure, the legal framework, the judges and the matter in dispute had all been defined by both countries.