An arbitral tribunal constituted under Annex VII to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea issued its long-awaited Award in the case the Philippines brought against China arising out of China’s claims in the South China Sea. I’m not a specialist in this area and so I’m not going to offer any detailed comment—you probably want to look to Julian Ku or others for that. Most experts predicted this was an easy win for the Philippines, and that’s how it turned out. The key point, it seems to me, was the tribunal’s decision that China’s maritime entitlements are defined by the Convention, and that even if China had some kind of “historic rights” (the nature and justification of which have never been…

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