Jurisdiction (in re upon, and under, the high seas)
Poster win_faa in #2632 leads thread into questions of jurisdiction, proceeding from settled provisions of the ICAO formal juridical architecture. Query, do not the generalized disputes as to claims in this region undercut the efficacy of ICAO's juridical structure in dealing with the legal dimensions of this still-unfolding incident?
Quite a while ago (almost 2 thousand posts earlier), this community member questioned whether territorial assertions by PRC might hamper the SAR efforts or make such efforts more complicated (see post #386).
I'm more than fifty percent convinced that the juridical scheme of the present system may not be in the best overall interest of the international civil aeronautics and aviation order. To wit, what SPECIFICALLY happened to this flight is a set of unknowns with tremendous importance to Boeing and the T7 program, and thus and by extension, to the U.S. and no less, the international order within which civil aeronautical and aviation take place. This is no assertion against ICAO - rather it is an advocacy for the question whether the above-referenced international order has progressed to a point where a higher order of trans-national juridical concept would apply.
So it's not only about territorial disputes and assertions impacting SAR, but also about the legal efficacy of an ICAO juridical structure which long, long predated September the Eleventh - yet neither anticipated the way the world would change, nor provided the legal tools Counsel need to get things to happen the right way, make them happen fast, as in, "give me summa that fancy lawyer-talkin'".....
If this is off the mark and the world civil aeronautics and aviation legal framework needs no significant adjustment, this is to urge community members to explain.