Judicial reasoning as a mask: rationalizing the transparency of the law of the sea tribunals

In this article, we hypothesize that, in the context of international adjudication, judicial reasoning has an equivalent cognitive function to that of masking in the context of rituals and performance arts. This is because, just like a mask, judicial reasoning comes between the seen—the judgement—and the unseen—the considerations leading to the judgment. We also suggest that only through conscious acts of uncovering—acts of de-masking and unmasking—can one hope to discover the role that judicial reasoning plays in a particular case. We then test this hypothesis by applying it to selected cases before the tribunals established under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, examining the relationship between judicial reasoning and the mask, the act of de-masking, and their impact on our understanding of transparency of international courts and tribunals.