Continuity and Discontinuity in International Dispute Settlement: An Inaugural Lecture

Abstract

It is an honour to be asked to inaugurate this new Masters course in International Dispute Settlement, the Geneva MIDS. Geneva is an obvious location for such a course, given the presence here both of institutions and of individuals who are so well known in the field as to be institutions in their own name—Pierre Lalive, most notably. Wherever the Geneva cadre of arbitration specialists is, there is by definition a centre for dispute settlement. So you are lucky in your teachers, as well no doubt in your courses. The main course on ‘Organisation of International Dispute Settlement’ takes a thematic approach, and quite rightly. To teach such a course in segments—the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the various ad hoc courts and tribunals, the Law of The Sea Tribunal, the World Trade Organization Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) and so on—seems to give rise to the kind of fragmentation at the educational level, which at the practical level is so often lamented. So it is an auspicious time for introducing this specialist Masters course, a course which at the same time is specialist and says something about the state of our still-general discipline.