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Full-Text Articles in Law
A Case Ill Suited For Judgment: Constructing 'A Sovereign Access To The Sea' In The Atacama Desert, Christopher Rossi
A Case Ill Suited For Judgment: Constructing 'A Sovereign Access To The Sea' In The Atacama Desert, Christopher Rossi
christopher robert rossi
Abstract: In 2015, the International Court of Justice ruled that Bolivia’s claim against Chile could proceed to the merit stage, setting up this Article’s discussion of perhaps the most intractable border dispute in South American history – Bolivia’s attempt to reclaim from Chile a ‘sovereign access to the Pacific Ocean’. This Article investigates the international law and deeply commingled regional history pertaining to the Atacama Desert region, the hyperarid yet resource-rich region through which Bolivia seeks to secure its long-lost access to the sea. Investigating the factual circumstances (effectivités), the post-colonial international legal principle of uti possidetis …
Impaled On Morton's Fork: Kosovo, Crimea, And The Sui Generis Circumstance, Christopher Rossi
Impaled On Morton's Fork: Kosovo, Crimea, And The Sui Generis Circumstance, Christopher Rossi
christopher robert rossi
Abstract: This Article investigates the problematic invocation of unique circumstances as a justification for circumventing the international law relating to use of force and state secession. Borrowing from the teachings of critical sociology, this Article addresses the lessons of NATO’s 1999 intervention in Kosovo and Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence from Serbia; it adapts those teachings to Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. Doctrinal, state-sponsored, and international juridical attempts to conform the Kosovo events to the international rule of law mask internal and unreconciled tensions within the Charter system. These tensions, which threaten to further weaken the system and expose it …