THEME DISCUSSION: Systematization of Legal Responsibilities in the Codification of the Environmental Law

Eco-environmental Legal Liability from the Perspective of the Environmental Code

Lyu Zhongmei

Abstract:A liability system has been developed in the field environmental law which is associated with but different from the traditional legal liability system. Yet, many problems still exist in this new system. Constructing a rational eco-environmental legal liability system and proposing a legislative scheme suitable for China’s national conditions and the development trend of the times are the important theoretical and practical topics that need to be studied in environmental codification. The environmental crisis has forced the legislature to reflect on the relationship between man and nature and to establish a pattern of behavior and legal consequences in accordance with the laws of nature. A manifestation of this trend of development is that various countries have broken through the traditional concept of “the dichotomy of subject and object” and “the dichotomy of public and private law” and incorporated natural attributes into the legitimacy of ecological legal liabilities in the design of the legal liability system in their environmental codes, thereby expanding the essence of “harmony between man and nature” of legal liabilities and promoting the integration of eco-environmental legal liabilities in both form and content. They have also expanded the “restoration” function on the basis of the traditional legal liability functions such as punishment, relief and prevention, establishing a new function and realizing the systematization and modernization of eco-environmental legal liabilities. In the codification of environmental law, China should promote the value goal of sustainable development, define eco-environmental legal liabilities with the concept of “a community of life for man and nature”, support the construction of a specialized eco-environmental legal liability system with the “ecological restoration theory” as the basis, build a “second-order typed” system consisting of “environmental legal liabilities and related legal liabilities” and “special liabilities and exclusive liabilities” corresponding to “responsibilities to humans” and “responsibilities to the environment”, so as to promote the transformation of the classification of eco-environmental legal liabilities from the chaotic classification to the categorization with unified value, unified concept and unified judgment standard. Specifically speaking, China should consider the codification of eco-environmental legal liabilities in a comprehensive manner, design the contents of eco-environmental legal liabilities in a type-oriented way, compile the provisions on eco-environmental legal liabilities into an independent book in the environmental code by adopting the compilation mode of “taking the independent book as the main body and separate provisions as supplements”, and divide the book into five chapters, namely “general principles, environmental administrative liabilities, environmental civil liabilities, liabilities for eco-environmental damage, and ecoenvironmental dispute resolution”. At the same time, supplementary legal liability clauses, mainly environmental administrative legal responsibility clauses, should be appropriately arranged in each chapter in light of the practical need of realizing the function of liabilities.

Innovation and Specialized Development of Environmental Administrative Legal Responsibilities

Liu Changxing

Abstract: Legal responsibilities are the basic guarantee for the implementation of environmental law and play an important role in the environmental law system. Based on the positioning of the environmental code as administrative legislation, administrative legal responsibilities should be the main focus of the design of legal responsibility rules in the code. The current environmental administrative liability system has such problems as insufficient legal responsibility guarantee for the preventive system, the mismatch between legal responsibilities and social consequences caused by violations of law, and the failure to implement the requirements of ecological environment restoration, the root cause of which is the inability of design approaches to adapt to the special needs of environmental administrative management. Theoretical and institutional innovations of environmental administrative legal responsibilities should be carried out based on the basic position of coping with environmental risks with environmental administration and with full consideration of the participation of multiple subjects in environmental administration and the goal of ecological and environmental restoration. Specifically, in such innovations, China should base itself on the basic framework of administrative legal responsibility, make full use of traditional administrative liability methods under the framework of cooperative governance, adapt itself to the need of transforming the role of environmental administrative subjects, and develop the system of government responsibility for environmental quality and the system of environmental administrative compensation responsibility. Based on the characteristics of the obligations of environmental administration counterparts, it should reasonably set flexible responsibilities such as the responsibility for process control of risks, the responsibility for environmental damage remediation and credit liability. Further, it should set specific ecological environment restoration liabilities in accordance with ecological and environmental quality goals, appropriately distribute them among environmental polluters and destroyers, and environmental administrators, and clarify their specific applicable conditions, subjects and contents in laws and regulations. Innovative environmental administrative legal responsibilities and traditional administrative liability methods should be arranged in a systematic way in the environmental code, with the general responsibility rules incorporated into the book on legal responsibilities, while rules on specific responsibilities for pollution control and other responsibilities incorporated into the corresponding books of the code. The environmental administrative legal responsibilities stipulated in the environmental code should correspond to the fundamental systems stipulated in the code, while their relations with the basic system of administrative legal responsibility and responsibility systems in other environmental laws and regulations should be taken into consideration.

Positioning and Construction of Civil Liability in the Environmental Code

Zhang Bao

Abstract: The special nature of environmental legal relations determines the complexity of environmental legal liability. As an important part of environmental legal liability, the codification of environmental civil liability in the environmental code needs to be dovetailed and coordinated with the relevant provisions of the Civil Code. Since no special rules of contractual liability have developed in the field of environment and also no special rules are needed, there is no need for specific provisions on contractual liability in the environmental code. As a result, the focus of environmental civil liability in the environmental code is mainly on the private environmental tort liability and ecological damage liability arising from acts of environmental pollution or ecological destruction. The green provisions in the Civil Code provide the basis and source for the above two types of liability, but there are also problems such as the difficulty in applying the legal rules of private tort liability to all types of pollution as well as the difficulty in following the traditional tort liability jurisprudence for ecological damage, which need to be addressed during the compilation of the environmental code. Private environmental torts require the establishment of liability rules that distinguish between mimetic and substantive pollution and the clarification of their application in relation to neighboring pollution infringement under property law. Although these issues can be resolved within the framework of the Civil Code through legislative amendments, this does not prevent the establishment of special civil law norms through environmental law codification. Liability for ecological damage is “public law in nature and private law in operation”. As a result, it is difficult to interpret this liability in a comprehensive manner under the traditional tort damage theory. Therefore, in order to respond to the specificity of ecological damage and its restoration, it is necessary to create a special liability regime with the “ecological restoration doctrine” as its guideline and make restoration in-kind the only form of liability for ecological damage. Monetary compensation, on the other hand, is a claim for the cost of restoration and should be used for restoration in-kind. In view of the fact that ecological damage liability is a product of the “privatization of public law”, in a context where there are already multiple punishment mechanisms in public law, it is inappropriate to apply punitive damages in cases of ecological damage. Meanwhile, in order to resolve the conflicts of jurisprudence and application arising from the administrative authorities’ concurrent civil claims and administrative enforcement powers in environmental codification, China needs to abolish the practice of filling ecological damages through public law liability, and limit administrative enforcement powers to daily supervision of environmental violations and emergency response to environmental pollution or ecological destruction, while leaving the filling of damages to civil liability.

THEORETICAL FRONTS

The Role, Limits and Irreplaceability of Formal Logic in Legal Reasoning

Chen Kun

Abstract: The role of formal logic in the field of legal reasoning has been questioned ever since Justice Holmes famously declared that “the life of law is not logic but experience”. In recent years, researchers of legal methodology represented by Karl Engisch and Chaim Perelman have tried to embed logic into the study of methodology, believing that logic is an integral part of legal methodology or legal argumentation theory, and calling it “substantive logic” or “legal logic”. The non-formal logic represented by Stephen Toulmin’s argumentation theory even tries to replace formal logic with the so-called “jurisprudence logic”. These claims come from the lack of a clear and systematic understanding of the role and importance of formal logic in legal reasoning. In the field of legal reasoning, formal logic plays an important role in clarifying and evaluating the validity of legal reasoning, deepening the understanding of legal reasoning and guiding legal reasoning activities. Formal logic, of course, is not a panacea; it can neither provide the premises of legal reasoning nor assess the content of legal arguments. But on the one hand, formal logic should not be criticized for not being able to do these things because these tasks should not be undertaken by formal logic, but by legal methodology and informal logic. On the other hand, legal methodology and informal logic cannot replace formal logic. The fundamental reason why legal methodology cannot replace formal logic is that the methodological rules provided by the former and the inferential rules provided by the latter are two distinctive kinds of rules of different natures, and they play different roles in the process of legal reasoning. Through the analysis of the structures, types and schemes of legal argument, informal logic can reveal what issues may be closely related to the argument evaluation, thereby helping us to find the corresponding domain knowledge to assess its content. The systematic understanding of common types of argumentation and their structures will also help us to carry out legal reasoning by constructing and evaluating pro-arguments and con-arguments. However, since it can be used neither to judge whether the premises are true or not nor to judge whether the premises necessarily lead to a conclusion, it cannot replace formal logic either. Since the inferential rules, which are essential to legal reasoning, can be constructed only on the precondition of distinguishing between the form and content of reasoning and can be tested only in a system of formal logic, formal logic plays an irreplaceable role in the field of legal reasoning. Only by fully realizing the functions and limits of formal logic, especially the irreplaceable nature of formal logic, can we better promote the cooperation between formal logic and related disciplines in the field of legal reasoning and thereby effectively promote the theoretical innovation and practical progress of legal reasoning.

The Constitutionality of the System of Transferring Prosecutors Between Procuratorates of Different Places or Levels

Cheng Xueyang

Abstract: The system of transferring prosecutors between procuratorates of different places or levels established by the current Organic Law of the People’s Procuratorates and the Rules of Criminal Procedure for People’s Procuratorates has caused great controversy in the current judicial practice, and the constitutionality of the system should be clarified at the constitutional level. The systematic hermeneutic analysis of the Chinese Constitution shows that the basic framework of this system meets the relevant constitutional requirements for the following three reasons: firstly, Article 137 (2) of the Constitution clearly stipulates that “the Supreme People’s Procuratorate directs the work of local people’s procuratorates at various levels and special people’s procuratorates, and the people’s procuratorates at higher levels lead the work of the people’s procuratorates at lower levels.” In the usage rules of Chinese language, the meaning of “lead” contains the content element of “allocating all kinds of human resources of subordinate organs”; secondly, the system is also in line with other “content regulation norms” and “boundary control norms” of the Constitution aimed at concretizing the connotation of Article 137 (2) of the Constitution; finally, under different constitutional systems, “procuratorial integration” has different normative meanings. According to Article 136 of the Constitution, the exercisers of procuratorial power are “procuratorates”, rather than “procurators”. However, the content of the system needs to be strengthened and improved in order to guarantee the full constitutionality of the whole system. Specifically, the following contents should be added to the Rules of Criminal Procedure for People’s Procuratorates: “the decision to transfer a prosecutor to a procuratorate in another place shall be made only with the consent of the standing committee of the people’s congress that has appointed the prosecutor (of the place from which the prosecutor is to be transferred out), “the transferred procurator shall be appointed only as a non-permanent procurator and shall accept the leadership of the chief procurator of the local procuratorate to which he is transferred”, and “the work of a transferred procurator shall be put on record and reported to the local people’s congress and its standing committee by the chief procurator of the procuratorate to which the procurator is transferred”. At the same time, the system of transferring prosecutors between procuratorates in different places or levels should also be subject to the related rules. At the theoretical level, the theory that “procuratorial power belongs to the central authority, rater than the local authority” and the theory that “local people’s procuratorates at various levels are ‘the procuratorates set up by the state in various localities’, rather than ‘local procuratorates’” are worth supporting and are in line with the development direction of the procuratorial system of China. However, these theories can be implemented and applied in the legal system of China only after the relevant constitutional and legal provisions are modified and perfected.

The Legal Liability of an Unauthorized Agent to His Counterparty

Zhu Hu

Abstract: The same rule applies to the identification of a good-faith counterparty in unauthorized agency in a narrow sense and to that in apparent agency, i.e., the counterparty is unaware of the absence of authorization, and such unawareness is not out of negligence. Since the rule on constitutive elements of apparent agency is more stringent, such a path of interpretation will not result in a complete overlap in the scope of application of the two rules. In principle, a good-faith counterparty has the right to choose to request the unauthorized agent to perform the debt or pay compensation, of which the amount should be expectation interests regardless of the subjective condition of the unauthorized agent. However, the interpretation that the scope of liability for damages assumed by an unauthorized agent is expectation interests does not prevent a good-faith counterparty from choosing to claim compensation for reliance interests from the unauthorized agent based on specific considerations. In exceptional cases, provided that an unauthorized agent is unaware of the absence of authorization and such unawareness is not out of negligence, a teleological restriction can be imposed on the first half of Article 174 Paragraph 3 of the Civil Code for the sake of balance of interests and systemic coordination, so that a good-faith counterparty cannot request the faultless unauthorized agent to perform the debt, but still has the right to claim damages, except that the scope of compensation is limited to reliance interests, which in no case may exceed the benefit that the counterparty could have obtained at the time of the principal’s ratification or in the authorized agency. This paragraph can be interpreted as building a statutory rule of risk sharing between the faultless unauthorized agent and the good-faith counterparty. A bad-faith counterparty may request the unauthorized agent to compensate reliance interests. In such a case, it is necessary to determine the degree of fault of both parties by considering the good or bad faith of the counterparty and the unauthorized agent and the reasonable expectation of the principal’s ratification and other factors and to combine the rules of the victim’s intent and comparative faults, so as to determine the specific proportion of liability. The counterparty’s awareness of the absence of authorization should not exclude the liability of the unauthorized agent. Otherwise, it will lead to an imbalance of interests between the two parties. The exercise by a good-faith counterparty of his revocation power does not necessarily exclude the liability of the unauthorized agent to the counterparty. In the case of apparent agency, the good-faith counterparty can either claim the validity of the agency in accordance with Article 172 of the Civil Code or choose to apply Article 171 to exercise the right of revocation and claim liability against the unauthorized agent. Such an interpretation neither results in the counterparty receiving protection beyond its reliance nor increases the risk of speculation by the counterparty.

Judgments in Complex and Sensitive Criminal Cases and Their Interpretation

Li Hong

Abstract: Complex and sensitive criminal cases mainly refer to cases involving crimes committed by citizens in the exercise of their basic political rights granted by the constitution, such as the crime of gathering a crowd to disturb public order committed in the exercise of the right of association and the right of assembly, and the crime of inciting the subversion of state power and the crime of inciting the split of the country when exercising the right of speech and the right of publication. How to judge and interpret these cases has been a long-standing problem in Chinese judicial practice. Japan is similar to China in historical and cultural backgrounds. After the Second World War, it established a new constitution that emphasizes the democratic legal system by following the example of the western system of the rule of law. However, the supporting legal system was not perfected in time, leading to significant legal disputes in the process of enforcing the constitution. Related cases were finally judged by the Supreme Court and the judgments in these cases laid the legal foundation for dealing with important political controversies in post-war Japan. In the trial of complex criminal cases, such as cases relating to the exercise of the right to labor dispute by a public official, the Treaty of Security and Safeguard Between Japan and the United States, and conflicts between the exercise of police power and academic freedom, Japanese courts have adopted the trial method of political and reasonable analysis to play the role of regulator of social relations while maintaining the constitutional system and dealing with various conflicts in an appropriate and skillful way. When dealing with criminal cases involving complex sensitive political issues in trial of specific cases, Japanese judges will first determine their political stance, that is, clarify the nature of related acts in the specific historical space-time conditions, estimate their possible “significant impact” in the future, and place this in an important, even primary position of judicial judgment. After the political position is determined, a Japanese judge will make a detailed analysis of the case with superb reasoning skills. The final conclusion may still be controversial, but the analysis process is meticulous and unquestionable. For complex cases that cannot be clearly explained through various legal interpretation techniques, Japanese judges will start from the vague standards of ethics or social common sense to evaluate the behavior pattern itself, so as to transform sensitive political cases into ordinary criminal justice cases. These trial experiences can be taken as reference by Chinese judges in the trial of similar cases, so as to “solve politically sensitive problems with legal means and deal with difficult and complex legal issues with political consciousness”.

Analysis of the Impact Dilemma of Autonomous Driving from the Perspective of Criminal Legitimacy Theory

Cai Mengjian

Abstract:Being an application of artificial intelligence, autonomous driving sets in the prior algorithm the avoidance measures that should be implemented in a collision dilemma. In case of collision, it faithfully implements the avoidance measures set by the algorithm, unlike a driver who has the possibility of randomly selecting collision objects. With respect to the response to the collision dilemma of autonomous driving, there have been discussions on the “trolley dilemma” in the philosophy of law and the dispute between utilitarianism and liberalism. On this basis, the legitimacy of its value choice should be extended to the specific design of collision rules and their corresponding legal application. At present, collision dilemmas of autonomous driving can be divided into two categories: those caused by acts of other people and those that are not. The former include the sudden appearance of a pedestrian crossing the road in violation of traffic rules or someone doing an emergency brake in front of the autonomous car on the expressway, and the latter include natural factors or problems with autonomous driving vehicles. Some people hold that, the collision dilemma of autonomous driving belongs to the permitted danger under criminal law, but the permitted danger in collision dilemma refers to the infringement upon the right to life caused in collision dilemma allowed by criminal law norms, and it is obviously inappropriate to understand the collision dilemma itself as the permitted danger of autonomous driving; some others believe that the collision dilemma in autonomous driving belongs to the conflict among several behavioral obligations under transportation laws and regulations, and the legitimacy of infringement should be judged according to the level of obligation. However, the obligation conflict fails to take into account the causes of the risk of accident and the risk-taking obligation and will lead to disputes such as protection discrimination in criminal law norms. It is rational to demonstrate the risk-taking obligation of autonomous driving in a collision dilemma on the basis of necessity and social solidarity. In the case of aggressive life-threatening necessity, because of the risk-taking obligation of autonomous driving, the infringement upon the right to life of an innocent traffic participant does not constitute a necessity. Under such circumstance, avoidance measures must be able to maximize the protection of the safety of users and other traffic participants while minimizing the infringement upon the rights of the users or passengers of the autonomous vehicle. In the defensive life-threatening necessity, because the person who causes the risk of the accident has the risk-taking obligation, the infringement upon his right to life by autonomous driving constitutes necessity. Based on the trust relationship between autonomous driving and the users or passengers, users or passengers can be expected to fulfill their risk-taking obligation. Therefore, the lack of expectation possibility should not be taken as a ground for the elimination of liability when autonomous driving implements unjustifiable risk avoidance measures in a collision dilemma.

Direct Paternalism of Criminal Law: Theoretical Clarification and Practical Turn

Deng Zhuoxing

Abstract: Direct paternalism means that the interferer directly prevents the interfered person from committing self-harm against his current wishes in order to protect his long-term interests. Paternalism has three basic characteristics: firstly, it is a restriction on the external freedom of the interfered person, irrespective of whether or not he consents to this restriction; secondly, it is the interference against the present will of the interfered person; and thirdly, it is in the long-term interests of the interfered person. When criminal law is used as a means of interference, this is known as direct paternalism of criminal law. It is generally accepted that direct paternalism in criminal law is not permissible on the grounds that acts against one’s own legal interests are not punishable under criminal law. However, it is not self-evident why an infringement on one’s own legal interests is not punishable under criminal law, which requires deeper theoretical exploration, and the function of direct paternalism in criminal law has yet to be explained. Direct paternalism in criminal law has two functions: the first is to make criminal law a means of direct paternalism by defining acts such as self-injury a crime or interpreting them as such in order to deter individuals from committing self-injurious acts. This function, however, contravenes the ideological foundations of criminal law, confuses moral and legal obligations, is inconsistent with the condemnatory character of punishment, fails to achieve the general preventive purpose of punishment, and therefore is undesirable. The second function, which is based on direct paternalism, decriminalizes interferences that are consistent with criminal law. In other words, on the one hand, direct paternalism can properly explain the necessity of the same subject of legal interest, such as the act of a bystander knocking unconscious a person who is about to commit suicide in order to prevent him from taking his life on impulse. There is a view in criminal law that cases in which the interest of preservation and the interest of sacrifice belong to the same person should be resolved on the basis of the principle of the victim’s consent. However, in such cases it is difficult to determine whether the victim has consented and it is more appropriate to rely on direct paternalism as a basis for decriminalizing the rescuer under the doctrine of necessity. On the other hand, direct paternalism may provide a basis for rescuing in accordance with law. A person who has a specific duty to do so may, subject to the principle of proportionality, use force to stop self-harm for the long-term benefit of the self-harming person, regardless of his or her immediate wishes. At a macro level, criminal law should remain neutral to direct paternalism, neither actively intervening or interfering nor preventing others from stopping unconscionable acts of self-harm on the basis of direct paternalism.

REVIEW OF FOREIGN LAWS

The End of Civil Disobedience- A Theoretical Logic Based on Rawls’ Theory of Loyalty to Law

He Hairen

Abstract:The normative theory of civil disobedience, which contains substantive elements such as the concept of civic virtue, a de-revolutionary view of the constitution, and philia’s sense of justice, produces “legal saints” to safeguard the constitutional order and completes the transformation from obedience to law to loyalty to law. If civil disobedience is broadly interpreted in the discourse of rationality, it may become a synonym for revolution, crime, or private remedy. In the context of normative civil disobedience, the constitutional order governed by the fundamental norm is not something that supporters of civil disobedience should oppose, but a cause of the rule of law that they should faithfully defend and dedicate themselves to. Once the domain of civil disobedience shifts from religious disobedience and conscientious disobedience to normative civil disobedience, the theoretical basis of civil disobedience changes paradigmatically. With normative civil disobedience as the benchmark, the classic cases of civil disobedience can be seen as either a disguised form of revolution or a constitutional act. This exemplifies the queerness and contradiction of the concept of loyalty to law in the Western context. Taking civil disobedience cases out of western textbooks as a role model for non-western countries ignores the historical context in which the ideal cases exist. Civil disobedience expresses legal allegiance by illegality, thus bringing a number of dilemmas for jurisprudence such as nonviolent coercion, legalization of moral rights, illegitimacy of evil law, and self-obedience. Although the democratization and legalization of civil disobedience regulate the arbitrariness of bona fide illegality and the uncertainty resulting from the right to disobey the law, they deny the intrinsic value of civil disobedience. The normative theory of civil disobedience sets high standards for implementation, which have excessively limited civil disobedience, tamed this complex political practice, and produced a clawless paradigm. Normative civil disobedience creates a new loyal faith in law and becomes one of the few jurisprudential events in contemporary jurisprudence that pushes civil disobedience into the ultimate philosophical discourse. Normative civil disobedience ignores the legitimate dimension of state power and reveals the limitations of the liberal theory of the state. Focusing on the philosophical deconstruction of normative civil disobedience, this paper does not design a refined version or improve this theory by replacing some elements of normative civil disobedience with lowered standards. Neither does it try to give a legal reformist proposal that would make civil disobedience a part of constitutional rights. Through a dynamic interpretation based on the rights remedy mechanism of the fundamental norms, fundamental rights are connected to constitutional rights with non-legal resources such as social, cultural and moral rights. This broadens the path of good law and good governance in which legality absorbs legitimacy and further maintains the institutional method of self-production of the legality mechanisms.

INTERNATIONAL LAW ISSUES

Expansion of the Subject-Matter Jurisdiction of Tribunals under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea

Liao Xuexia

Abstract: Part XV of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) concerning dispute settlement mechanisms sets limits on the subject-matter jurisdiction of the tribunals established under the Convention, namely, only disputes concerning the interpretation or application of the Convention may be submitted to the relevant compulsory procedures. However, the tendency of the tribunals established under the Convention to expand the scope of the subject-matter jurisdiction has become an acute problem in the practices of the UNCLOS tribunals. The manifestation of this problem is that UNCLOS tribunals exercise jurisdiction over disputes which are not related to the Convention or have no sufficient connection with the Convention to trigger the compulsory procedures, or alternatively, apply extraneous rules outside the Convention to decide disputes. The analysis of this article demonstrates that UNCLOS tribunals have adopted various approaches and employed a range of legal techniques in their long-term practices to expand the subject-matter jurisdiction. First, they have lowered the standard on the establishment of the linkage between the dispute and the Convention, thus extending the jurisdiction over disputes that are not related to the Convention. Second, where a dispute has multiple aspects or where there exist multiple disputes, they either attempt to recharacterize or even reformulate the dispute(s), or separate the various aspects of the dispute(s), resulting in the extension of their jurisdiction over extraneous matters that are not related to the Convention. Third, they have applied relaxed interpretative techniques to the provisions of the Convention in order to incorporate and apply extraneous rules to decide disputes, inappropriately broadening the substantive scope of the applicable law. The practices of UNCLOS tribunals of extending the scope of the subject-matter jurisdiction not only go beyond the boundary of State consent but also undermine the substantive limitations on the acceptance by States parties of the compulsory procedures of UNCLOS. In consequence, they have departed from the fundamental presumption held by the States parties about the limited jurisdiction of the dispute settlement mechanism under the Convention. To solve this problem and avoid the legitimacy crisis of the dispute settlement mechanism under the Convention, UNCLOS tribunals should strive for consistency in their practices by employing the criterion of “sufficient link” as a general standard of establishing the subject-matter jurisdiction, and refraining from adopting subjective standards such as the criterion of “relative weight”. Meanwhile, States parties should also strengthen external control over the composition and the procedures of UNCLOS tribunals by exploring the potentials of the existing treaty provisions and mechanisms, with a view to reversing the structural bias rooted in the practices of UNCLOS tribunals.