The day after: Enforcing The Hague verdict in the South China Sea (Richard Javad Heydarian, Brookings)

It was an unequivocal rebuke of China’s expansive maritime claims and increasingly assertive posturing in adjacent waters. An arbitral tribunal, constituted under Article 287, Annex VII of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), handed the Philippines a landmark victory against its giant neighbor. Most experts anticipated a favorable outcome, but few predicted its breadth. Not only did the tribunal exercise jurisdiction on almost all of the Philippines’ arguments, it also ruled favorably on the most thorny and consequential items, particularly China’s doctrine of "historic rights."

http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2016/07/25-day-after-south-china-sea-heydarian