In August 2017, Chinese coast guard and navy ships were seen close by Sandy Cay, a sandbar neighboring Philippine-occupied Thitu (Pag-asa) Island in the South China Sea (SCS). Then Senior Associate Justice of the Philippine Supreme Court, Antonio Carpio, warned that Sandy Cay was “being seized (to put it mildly), or being invaded (to put it frankly) by China.” President…
Legal bindingness is one of the most contentious points in the consultations between ASEAN countries and China on a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea (COC). Legal bindingness will differentiate the COC from the nonbinding 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC); after all, a legally binding agreement was the original vision…
The filing of a case against China was a historic moment in Philippine foreign relations: it was the first time that the Philippines resorted to an international judiciary to settle a political dispute.1 In retrospect, the effort was well worth it, at least from a legal standpoint. On 12-July-2016, three years since filing the case on 22-January-2013, the Philippines secured…