The recent award by an arbitral tribunal in a case brought by the
Philippines against China gives lawyers reason to reexamine the
historical evidence put forward by claimants in the South China Sea
disputes. While the Tribunal was barred from considering territorial or
boundary questions, it did cast doubt on the historical narrative rule
that China has asserted in support of its claims. Fresh evidence from
other sources also suggests that discussions of these matters need to
move beyond arguments put forward in a small number of papers
published more than thirty years ago. A close examination of the
references used in those papers shows that they relied upon highly
partisan Chinese sources. Recent historical research has produced new
facts about the development of the competing territorial claims in the
South China Sea, but international legal discourse has yet to take these
findings into account. This article examines some of the key works in
the field and calls for them to be reassessed and for future discussion
of the disputes to be based upon verifiable and contextualized
evidence rather than on nationalist assertions.
More infomation: When Good Lawyers Write Bad History: Unreliable Evidence and the South China Sea Territorial Dispute
