Professor Bernard H. Oxman appointed judge ad hoc of Tribunal for the Law of the Sea

On September 8, 2003, the Government of Singapore appointed Professor Bernard H. Oxman as Judge ad hoc of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in connection with proceedings against it instituted by Malaysia with respect to land reclamation activities in and around the Straits of Johor. The Government of Malaysia has interposed no objection to Professor Oxman's appointment.

Professor Oxman is the first American to serve on the Tribunal. He will be sworn in at a public session on September 24, 2003, at the Tribunal headquarters in Hamburg, Germany. The hearings in the case will begin the next day.

Professor Oxman has been a member of the faculty of the University of Miami School of Law since 1977 and regularly teaches courses in international law, law of the sea, conflict of laws, and torts. He was elected in April 2003 to a five-year term as co-Editor in Chief of the American Journal of International Law, one of the leading journals in its field.

The Tribunal is an independent judicial body established by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to settle disputes arising out of the interpretation and application of the Convention. It is composed of 21 independent members elected by the states parties to the Convention, which now number 143. If the members of the Tribunal do not include a judge of the nationality of a party to the dispute, that party may appoint an additional member to the Tribunal with respect to that case. In the instant dispute, both parties exercised that right; Malaysia appointed Dr. Kamal Hossain, a jurist from Bangladesh.

This will be the first time that two members of the same university faculty will serve together on the Tribunal. One of the elected members, Judge Hugo Caminos of Argentina, teaches at the University of Miami School of Law each spring.