A opinião sobre o arquipélago de Chagos: a jurisdição consultiva da Corte Internacional de Justiça e a noção de controvérsia

Abstract

In the advisory opinion on the Legal Consequences of the Separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) had its advisory jurisdiction contested by the fact that it had existed a pending dispute between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Mauritius. The present work analyzes the arguments employed by the Court in order to overcome this objection and to substantiate its advisory jurisdiction. The Court made recourse to two main arguments. The Court has broadened the scope of its jurisdiction with the aim of accommodating its answer within the broader frame of decolonization, previously tackled by the General Assembly. Another argument employed by the Court was the fact that a pronounce of this kind would not touch the issues of a dispute. The work performs an examination of the rules that underlie the Court’s advisory function and also the relevant case law. I argue that the application of the criteria previously developed in the Court’s case law in the present case has as a consequence a subtle enlargement of the scope of the advisory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice.