Did the Preliminary Objections Judgment Resolve the Chagos Archipelago Sovereignty Dispute?

Abstract

Noticing the conclusion of the Preliminary Objections Judgment in the case of Mauritius vs. Maldives Maritime Delimitation, this paper asks whether the Special Chamber’s decision has resolved the sovereignty dispute over the Chagos Archipelago. It re-examines the conclusion that the continued claim of the United Kingdom to sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago is a mere assertion and the UK has no legal interest in it. This paper argues that the legal system has a self-reproducing nature by which the Special Chamber regenerates decisions already established in the legal system as the distinction between lawful and unlawful is the most fundamental determination of this system. In this sense, the confirmation of the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice by the Special Chamber should be regarded as a consequence of its subjectivity and the fact that it almost distinguishes the legal system from other systems outside the law. From a perspective outside the legal system, the claim of courts that its role of “dispute settlement” is more like “case settlement”, since courts are resolving disputes after legalization, not the disputes themselves. The de facto settlement of disputes should be based on the elimination of the interests or claims of the disputing parties. In this sense, dispute settlement depends on how the legal and political systems work together in a coupling relationship.