THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE LAW OF THE SEA PROFESSOR BARBARA KWIATKOWSKA - Deputy Director NILOS Guest Lecture, Faculty of Law, University of Stockholm, Sweden 3 March 1998 - Updated as of 15 June 2006
I was delighted to be asked by my old friend, Professor Said Mahmoudi, to deliver this Guest Lecture and I am particularly pleased to be able to visit the Stockholm Faculty of Law, which has made and continues to make its mark in the international sphere as few law schools do. As Dickens is reputed to have said when asked where to start, he said: "Start at the beginning".1 While preparing my lecture, I in fact identified two beginnings. Firstly, the choice of subject of "The Contribution of the International Court of Justice to the Development of the Law of the Sea" originated in typically constructive remark of President Stephen M. Schwebel: That the Court has made significant contributions to the development of international law - the law of the sea and the law of the United Nations in particular -- is unquestioned.2 Cited after H.E. President Stephen M. Schwebel, Introduction, in C. Peck and R.S. Lee eds., Increasing the Effectiveness of the International Court of Justice, Proceedings of the ICJ/UNITAR Colloquium to Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Court 207 (1997). S.M. Schwebel, Fifty Years of the World Court: A Critical Appraisal, in Are International Institutions Doing Their Job?, Proceedings of the 90th ASIL Annual Meeting, Washington D.C., 27-30 March 1996 339, 345 (1997), as analyzed by B. Kwiatkowska, The Law of the Sea Related Cases in the International Court of Justice During the Presidency of Judge Stephen M. Schwebel (1997-2000) and Beyond, 2 The Global Community Yearbook of International Law and Jurisprudence (YILJ) 27-75 (2002 Vol.I)