The Legacy of the Mavrommatis Case at Its 100th Anniversary

This article introduces a special issue on the centenary of the Mavrommatis Palestine Concessions case (Greece v. United Kingdom), the second case ever decided by the Permanent Court of International Justice. Arising from a seemingly ordinary dispute, the withdrawal of a concession from a foreign investor, the case established principles that remain landmarks in both procedural and substantive international law. The article traces five key issues affirmed in the 1924 Judgment: (1) the distinction between objections to jurisdiction and to the admissibility of a claim; (2) the definition of "dispute"; (3) the nature of the right invoked in the exercise of diplomatic protection (a right belonging to the State, not the individual); (4) the interpretive criterion for multilingual treaties; (5) the lesser degree of formalism in international procedure compared to domestic courts. For each theme, the article follows its subsequent jurisprudential evolution, from the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ) to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), through recent cases such as Genocide (Croatia v. Serbia) 2008, Marshall Islands 2016, LaGrand, Diallo, Certain Iranian Assets, and CERD (Azerbaijan v. Armenia) 2024, showing how the Mavrommatis dictum has been reinterpreted, criticized, or reaffirmed over time, particularly in light of the development of individual human rights.