Complementary Agreements and Compulsory Jurisdiction

Since the founding of the United Nations, the number of treaties and the matters they address have expanded vastly. It is increasingly common to find the same subjects addressed in complementary global, regional, and bilateral treaties. Many of these treaties contain provisions on the settlement of disputes regarding the interpretation or application of that treaty itself. Only some of those provisions establish compulsoryjurisdiction. These circumstances suggest an increasing probability that a dispute will arise between states under the substantive provisions of two complementary treaties with dispute settlement clauses, only one of which provides for compulsory arbitration or adjudication either in general or with respect to that dispute.