CYPRUS v. TURKEY JUDGMENT 101 PARTLY DISSENTING OPINION OF JUDGE PALM JOINED BY JUDGES JUNGWIERT, LEVITS, PANŢÎRU, KOVLER AND MARCUS-HELMONS While sharing most of the Court's conclusions in this complex case, I feel obliged to record my dissent in respect of one major issue: the significance attached by the Court to the existence of a system of remedies within the “TRNC”. I consider the Court's approach to this question to be so misguided that it taints the judgment as a whole. For the reasons developed below, this is especially unfortunate since it was open to the Court to carry out its task by avoiding this particular entanglement in a manner perfectly consonant with principle and its case-law. In its Loizidou v. Turkey judgment of 18 December 1996 (merits) (Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1996-VI), the Court found that Article 159 of the fundamental law was to be considered as invalid against the background of the refusal of the international community to regard the “TRNC” as a State under international law. It did not “consider it desirable, let alone necessary ... to elaborate a general theory concerning the lawfulness of legislative and administrative acts of the 'TRNC'” (p. 2231, §§ 44-45). The Court was obviously concerned to limit its reasoning to what was essential for the decision of the case before it and to avoid straying into areas of particular complexity and delicacy concerning the “legality” of acts of an “outlaw” regime. It is my firm view that the Court should be equally careful in the present case to avoid elaborating a general theory concerning the validity and effectiveness of remedies in the “TRNC”, particularly if it is to be built around the minimalist remarks of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its Advisory Opinion on Namibia which the Court in Loizidou saw fit not to interpret or to explicate any further than necessary. Such a policy of judicial restraint in this area is supported by three main considerations. In the first place, any consideration of remedies gives rise to the obvious difficulty that the entire court system in the “TRNC” derives its legal authority from constitutional provisions whose validity the Court cannot recognise – for the same reasons that it could not recognise Article 159 in the Loizidou case – without conferring a degree of legitimacy on an entity from which the international community has withheld recognition. An international court should not consider itself free to disregard either the consistent practice of States in this respect or the repeated calls of the international community not to facilitate the entity's assertion of statehood. Secondly, the Court cannot examine the remedies of the “TRNC” in a vacuum, as if it were a normal Contracting Party, where it can be assumed that courts are “established by law” or that judges are independent and impartial (absent evidence to the contrary). To attribute legal validity to court remedies necessarily involves the Court in taking stand on whether the courts are “established by law” – something the Court