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Abstract

Despite their many differences, and as the Falklands/Malvinas case illustrates, boundary disputes have been strikingly consistent in at least one respect: they have tended to defy durable, sustainable solutions. Politicians, international law jurists, negotiators and scholars have largely failed to successfully craft solutions for the many complex problems created by boundary disputes, sticking in the main to a determination of who is right and who is wrong. In light of such failure, the time may have come to seriously revisit a ‘largely abandoned theory of boundary dispute resolution’: the condominium (Samuels, 2007, p. 728). Its rarity in application stems not from its lack of success, but rather from a continued obsession to resort to dogmatism in lieu of pragmatism (Jacobs, 2012, n.p.). After all, and paraphrasing Judge Huber in his Island of Palmas judgment, territorial sovereignty belongs always to one state, but in exceptional circumstances to several states, to the exclusion of all other states (my emphasis) (Post, 2016).