Public International Law

Seas have been rising for thousands of years, since the end of the last ice age, but the rate of rise has dramatically increased in the last few hundred years. The weight of scientific opinion is that human-generated pollutants are responsible for the accelerated rise. Entire countries of the world will soon lose their land territory. Having land is a requirement for a people to have a country.

The largest and some say the most significant legal case in history will be decided by the World Court in The Hague in a few months. Briscoe Prows Kao Ivester & Bazel LLP international-law practice, now led by Peter Prows, is largely responsible for developing the legal theories, and political strategy, to get the Climate Change Case before the International Court of Justice. The firm represents the small island nation of Palau, which joined with other small-island nations to bring the case to the ICJ, where we have argued that nations whose pollutants have contributed to global warming are liable to non-polluting nations suffering the consequences. Ninety-six countries of the world have appeared in the case, and eleven regional organizations. In this respect alone it is the largest law case in history. The Court’s decision may be the most profound. The Court heard the case in the latter part of 2024, and is formulating its opinion now.

The Climate Change Case is the result of many years of work by the firm’s lawyers in the field going back fifty years. John Briscoe in 1975 began work on a case governed by international law that would require two trials (yes, trials) before the United States Supreme Court, and arguments before that court. Since then, Briscoe and others at the firm have handled many such assignments, in the United States and abroad.

The firm’s lawyers have represented the States of California, Alaska, and Georgia before the Supreme Court in maritime-boundary cases decided under international law, and advised the State of Hawaii for some years on its claims, and the Territory of Guam as well.

They advised and represented the State of Kuwait regarding its maritime boundary with Iraq in the Arabian or, if you will, Persian Gulf. (That case was interrupted by Iraq’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait, then Operation Desert Storm, the 700 oil fires and so on.)

After Desert Storm, the United Nations set up a tribunal to hear claims against Iraq. The most significant were the environmental claims for the oil-well fires and the consequent unimaginable pollution of the land, sea, and air. Briscoe was retained by the U.N., along with famed English barrister and scholar Philippe Sands, to serve as Special Advisor to shape the tribunal that would hear the claims, and write the rules of procedure and of evidence for it, balancing Sharia law, English common law, and continental civil law and ever mindful of the difficulties of acquiring and presenting evidence from the battlefields of war.

In 2000 Ethiopia and Eritrea had been fighting a bloody war for two years. In that year the African Union secured a cease-fire between the two, who agreed to take their claims against each other to an international tribunal. Briscoe was retained by Ethiopia, along with his longtime colleague from Berkeley, David Caron, to represent Ethiopia in the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. Each nation accused the other of crimes under the law of war, crimes against humanity, and the crime of genocide.

Later the firm advised the government of Mexico in its continental-shelf dispute with the United States, the Republic of Korea in its dispute with Japan over the islets called Dok Do (or Liancourt, or Takeshima, depending on the language of your atlas, or app), and Korea in other disputes, and Palau in its outer continental shelf dispute with Japan.

John Briscoe is a Distinguished Fellow at the Law of the Sea Institute at the University of California Berkeley School of Law, and a member of the advisory board of the Rhodes Academy of Oceans Law and Policy.

Peter Prows, after earning his J. D., took his master’s degree in International Legal Studies from New York University in 2006, clerked for Judge Koroma of the International Court of Justice in The Hague from 2006-2007, and then for Judge Charles Brower in his chambers in The Hague and in London from 2007-2008.

Nicole Kim, a graduate of Handong International Law School in South Korea, who has international-law experience in South Korea as well as with the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France, is the newest member of the firm’s international-law practice group.