Practice

Seven areas of advisory work, organised around the matters where foreign policy and international law meet.

Each practice area below corresponds to a substantive subject of advice. The seven mechanisms in Article 33 of the UN Charter — negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, and resort to regional agencies — are the procedural routes through which any of these subjects may travel. Pax33 begins each mandate by asking which mechanism the matter actually needs.

Practice areas 07  ·  Subject areas of advisory work
  1. 01

    State-to-state counselling on international dispute settlement and advisory proceedings

    Pax33 advises sovereign states across the architecture of inter-state dispute settlement — proceedings before the International Court of Justice, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, arbitral tribunals, and ad hoc panels, alongside the negotiated, mediated, and conciliatory routes that often serve clients better. The work spans case theory, procedural strategy, written and oral advocacy, and the diplomatic register in which inter-state matters are conducted.

  2. 02

    Foreign and diplomatic relations, including treaty interpretation

    Pax33 advises ministries of foreign affairs, attorneys general, and presidential offices on the legal architecture of bilateral and multilateral engagements: treaty interpretation, jurisdictional posture, defensive strategy, and the drafting of legal and diplomatic instruments, including notes verbales. This is the work that decides whether a dispute will need to be settled at all, and on what terms.

  3. 03

    Territorial sovereignty and law of the sea

    Pax33 advises on territorial disputes, maritime delimitation, the regime of maritime zones, the extended continental shelf, and the management of contested resources at sea. The practice covers proceedings before international courts and tribunals as well as the bilateral, regional and multilateral processes through which most boundary questions are actually resolved.

  4. 04

    Sanctions, immunities, state responsibility, and reparations

    Pax33 advises on the international legal regimes governing sanctions, sovereign and diplomatic immunities, state responsibility, and reparations — the doctrines that determine what a state may lawfully do, what it owes, and what it may be made to answer for.

  5. 05

    Climate change and the global commons

    Pax33 advises states, institutions, and — where relevant — corporates on the international legal dimensions of climate change and the protection of the global commons: obligations under the climate regime, state responsibility for environmental harm, and the architecture of shared spaces — the high seas, the deep seabed, the polar regions, and outer space. This is among the fastest-evolving regions of the practice, where existing frameworks are tested by new actors and new pressures.

  6. 06

    Strategic counsel and risk and contingency assessment

    Pax33 conducts 360° appraisals of disputes in the making — sequencing options and venues, identifying red lines, mapping leverage and risk, and translating foreign-policy objectives into executable action. The practice serves senior decision-makers in government and corporates whose operations are exposed to the legal and political conditions of a contested international order, including questions of sovereign risk, treaty exposure, sanctions, and the international developments most likely to reach the boardroom.

  7. 07

    Capacity building

    Pax33 designs and delivers training programs for foreign ministry legal departments, diplomatic services, and the legal teams of state-owned entities, and conducts executive briefings for boards and senior management on the questions of international law most relevant to their operations. Programs are delivered in English, Spanish, or French.

    Read the capacity-building page

Article 33

The seven mechanisms by which states are obliged to resolve their disputes peacefully.

Article 33 of the United Nations Charter enumerates seven means by which states are obliged to resolve their disputes peacefully. Pax33 is named for the article and the practice tracks its architecture. Each summary below serves as both the card description on this page and the lead paragraph of the mechanism's own page.

  1. 01 Negotiation

    Negotiation is the first instrument named in Article 33 and the one that shapes every other. Most disputes between states are resolved, narrowed, or made tractable through it long before a tribunal is seated. The substance and sequencing of negotiations often determine what later proceedings can achieve.

    What Pax33 does here. Pax33 advises clients on the legal architecture of state-to-state negotiations — mandate, posture, record, and the preservation of rights — so that what is agreed at the table is durable, and what is reserved is preserved.

  2. 02 Enquiry

    Enquiry is the procedural cooling of a dispute through impartial fact-finding. Where the contested questions are evidentiary rather than legal — what occurred, in what sequence, with what effect — enquiry establishes a record on which any subsequent mechanism can build.

    What Pax33 does here. Pax33 advises on the design and conduct of fact-finding processes, on the preparation of submissions to commissions of enquiry, and on the use of their findings in later proceedings.

  3. 03 Mediation

    Mediation introduces a respected third party to assist the disputing states without displacing their authority over the outcome. It is the mechanism most often chosen where the legal questions are entangled with political ones, and where settlement matters more than precedent.

    What Pax33 does here. Pax33 advises clients on the structure and conduct of mediated processes — selection of mediators, framing of the brief, drafting of the eventual instrument — and acts as counsel within them.

  4. 04 Conciliation

    Conciliation occupies the ground between mediation and arbitration: a structured procedure with a panel that issues recommendations rather than binding awards. It is the mechanism of choice where parties want a reasoned third-party view without surrendering the final decision.

    What Pax33 does here. Pax33 advises on the constitution of conciliation commissions, the preparation of pleadings and evidence before them, and the legal and political handling of their reports.

  5. 05 Arbitration

    Arbitration is the mechanism by which states and investors submit binding disputes to tribunals of their own constitution. Investor-state arbitration under ICSID, UNCITRAL, and ad hoc rules, alongside inter-state arbitration before standing institutions and ad hoc panels.

    What Pax33 does here. Pax33 advises states and state entities throughout the proceeding — jurisdictional phase, merits, quantum, post-award — with attention to the political environment in which awards are received.

  6. 06 Judicial settlement

    Judicial settlement is the submission of a dispute to a standing international court — the International Court of Justice, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, or a regional court of competent jurisdiction like the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. It is the most formal of the seven mechanisms and produces the most durable record.

    What Pax33 does here. Pax33 advises on jurisdictional posture before standing courts, prepares written and oral submissions, and supports proceedings before the ICJ and ITLOS in particular. This is among Pax33's strongest areas, drawing on the Managing Director's extensive experience of how these courts and tribunals work.

  7. 07 Resort to regional agencies

    Article 33 contemplates regional bodies as a forum for peaceful settlement alongside the universal mechanisms. The Organization of American States, the African Union, ECOWAS, the Andean Community, ASEAN, and their judicial and political organs each carry distinct procedures and institutional cultures.

    What Pax33 does here. Pax33 advises clients on the regional forum best suited to the dispute, on procedural posture before regional courts and political organs, and on the relationship between regional and universal proceedings.