Foley & Lardner LLP partner Vanessa Miller commented in the SupplyChainBrain article, “The Fight for Control of the Panama Canal,” lending important context to the recent headlines over the important waterway.
“I think it’s fairly unrealistic at this point in time, and there are a lot of reasons for it,” Miller explained, highlighting the mountain of legal obstacles that would arise if Panama was pushed to relinquish control of the canal.
She described how there are no provisions dictating how a dispute in the U.S. and Panama should be settled in the neutrality treaty between the nations, and how the only court that would likely be equipped to hear a legal challenge on the issue would be the International Court of Justice, to which the U.S. is not a signatory.
“I think there’s some middle ground. I think that it could open up some good dialogue on what we can do to improve the canal, both with respect to money to help modernize it, and then security concerns,” Miller added. “That would align with Panama, and many other countries that use the canal would be in favor of that.”
