The Clipperton Island Arbitration - A Systematic Failure of Legal Method - A Doctrinal Challenge and Reconstruction (The Hakimi Thesis)

The Clipperton Island Arbitration: A Systematic Failure of Legal Method - A Doctrinal Challenge and Reconstruction (The Hakimi Thesis)by Hakimi Abdul Jabar (A.J. Hakimi) All Rights Reserved. © 2026 THE SOFTWARE SUITE™ AND A.J. HAKIMI AbstractThis research provides a comprehensive methodological reconstruction of the 1931 Clipperton Island arbitral award, asserting that the decision constitutes a failure of legal method under the international law framework extant between 1858 and 1931. While traditional critiques focus on the arbitrator’s bias or the perceived absurdity of the result, this study employs a rigorous Intertemporal Law Framework to demonstrate that the award failed even the legal standards of its own era.The core of this reconstruction is a three-tiered evidentiary and doctrinal analysis:The Inchoate Title Doctrine: A systematic review of 19th-century state practice (British, American, and German) to establish that France’s 1858 symbolic act created only an inchoate title requiring perfection through subsequent assertion.The Constructive Abandonment Matrix: An analysis of the "Fatal 39-Year Silence" (1858–1897), wherein France’s failure to protest third-party commercial exploitation (American guano mining) is reframed as acquiescence to abandonment rather than mere administrative neglect.The Succession-Assertion Model: A re-evaluation of Mexico’s claim via uti possidetis juris, arguing that Mexico’s 1897 naval expedition was a defensive reassertion of inherited Spanish title against a lapsed foreign claim, rather than a de novo creation of title.