Lunch seminar with Naphtali Ukamwa
The State Obligation to Appear Before International Courts and Tribunals
Abstract
As states have either refused to appear or failed to defend their cases before international courts and tribunals (IC/Ts), scholars have debated whether states are obligated to participate in the relevant legal proceedings. These debates rest on mixed theoretical approaches to international law: the Grotian naturalist-positivist and positivist-inductivist views. While the Grotian naturalist-positivists argue that states have an obligation to appear, the positivist-inductivists contend that states have no such obligation. This paper examines the jural-relational universe of states where these debates occur—namely that of jurisdiction—as a crucial starting point for understanding the existence or absence of a duty of states to appear before IC/Ts. This paper argues that the obligation of states to appear before IC/Ts can be inferred primarily from a set of case-specific factors that are classified as jurisdiction-dependent and jurisdiction-independent.
Speaker Bio
Naphtali Ukamwa is a PhD Researcher in Public International Law at Trinity College Dublin. He is interested in Public International Law, Jurisprudence, and History. He holds a Bachelor of Laws (Hons), Lagos and an LLM in International (Human Rights and Humanitarian) Law, Lund. He is also a Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria.
Meeting ID: 657 9522 3693
Passcode: 358843