International Claims Commissions

Interstate Arbitration: “… Settling Disputes Which Diplomacy Has Failed to Settle”

“…The parties are free to depart from the basic model to shape the arbitral process to meet their needs and interests. For example, the tribunals in the Red Sea and Taba cases consisted of five arbitrators, while in the Tinoco case, a 1923 arbitration in which Great Britain sued Costa Rica for alleged financial injuries done to two British nationals by the Costa Rican government, the tribunal consisted of a single arbitrator, William Howard Taft, the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and a former American president (Tinoco Case).…”

“…Created in 1981, the tribunal continues to function as part of an indirect agreement between the U.S. and the Iranian government to liberate American diplomats taken hostage by Iranian radicals and to settle the claims of American investors who had lost their investments in Iran through expropriations resulting from the Iranian revolution of 1979 (Algiers Declaration). In most instances, a claims tribunal or commission is created by agreement between two states as part of a diplomatic peacemaking effort to allow a defined group of one state’s nationals injured by another state’s actions to seek compensation from that other state by arbitrating their claims before an international arbitral tribunal (Dolzer 2013; Brilmayer and Giorgetti 2017). The resulting arbitrations are not interstate processes but instead are cases between a state and a foreign national; however, the existence of a claims commission depends on an agreement between the two concerned states.…”