Spigelman CJ once noted that ‘lawyers are traffickers in words’1. Trafficked words, however, often require safe passage across international borders and the high seas, most commonly within treaties. Fortunately, the principles for treaty interpretation hold steady in an often tumultuous global climate. This is illustrated by the High Court decision in Evans v Air Canada, where the importance of the Vienna Convention to the interpretation of all treaties is made clear2. Article 31(1) of the convention requires each treaty to be interpreted in accordance with ‘context and in the light of its object and purpose’. Treaty words are intended to take consistent meanings irrespective of the places to which they are trafficked3. Individual states are generally not entitled to their own private versions of what a treaty means divorced from Vienna Convention protocols.
Mannat Mandhan – Tax Counsel Network
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Footnotes:
1 Spigelman [2007] Education Monograph 4.
2 Evans v Air Canada [2025] HCA 22 [6].
3 Kingdom of Spain [2023] HCA 11 [38], DH122 [2025] FCAFC 91 [38].