Tom Frost (Senior Lecturer at Kent Law School) and co-author Colin Murray (Professor at Newcastle Law School) have won the Melbourne Journal of International Law Prize for Outstanding Scholarship in International Law for their article ‘The Mists of Time: Intertemporality and Self-Determination’s Territorial Integrity Rule in the ICJ’s Chagos Advisory Opinion’.
The Prize Committee determined that the article
‘demonstrated a sophisticated use of primary and secondary sources, a skilled engagement with both international and domestic legal proceedings and a clarity of analysis about the historic attitudes of a colonial power, thus providing enduring insights.’
The article’s abstract explains that ‘The United Kingdom’s critique of the International Court of Justice’s Chagos Advisory Opinion has focused upon the Court’s approach to the norms of international law applicable at the time of the British Indian Ocean Territory’s (‘BIOT’) creation, which involved the excision of territories from two of its then colonies, Mauritius and the Seychelles. The decision turned on whether norms of self-determination relating to the territorial integrity of colonised territories had crystallised as customary international law before the BIOT was created in November 1965, a proposition the UK continues to publicly reject. This is a dispute about temporality and the development of customary international law. This article interrogates the UK’s claims by reviewing the holdings of the UK National Archives, which detail how Ministers, legal advisers and officials understood the norms of self-determination applicable to the BIOT. They demonstrate that the UK government was acutely aware of the implications of these rules for the new colony’s creation and sought to distract United Nations organs from the relevant legal questions. They therefore provide a window into how certain voices have long been prioritised over others in the processes by which customary international law develops.’
Tom’s research interests centre upon the idea of justice broadly construed, and the following main areas:
- The history of the British Empire, its governance of its colonies, its involvement in the slave trade, and the position of law in both.
- Decolonial approaches to Public Law specifically, and the teaching of law more broadly.
- The figure of the slave in Western European philosophy and political thought.