Compliance with the Permanent Court of Arbitration

• In Event: International Law and Second-Order Compliance

Abstract

The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) constitutes one of the first international adjudicative bodies. It serves as a platform for resolution of interstate and investor-state disputes. A variety of disputes make it to the docket of the PCA, including territorial and maritime delimitation contentions, disputes over rivers, rights to natural resources, to name a few. Compliance with PCA's arbitral awards is crucial not only to parties involved, but also to the international community, as these decisions have been shown to result in long periods of peace between former state-adversaries. In the context of investor-state disputes, PCA provides an unbiased platform for resolution of protracted domestic contentions. This paper focuses on states' and investor's compliance with the PCA's decisions. Is compliance more likely in the context of investor-state or interstate arbitrations? Does the membership of arbitral panels influence the parties' likelihood of compliance with the awards? What factors determine the timing of compliance? Does states' embeddedness in the global community encourage compliance?

Author

• Emilia Justyna Powell, University of Notre Dame