evidence: On 28 January 2021 a Special Chamber of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) delivered its decision in the preliminary objections stage of the Indian Ocean maritime boundary dispute between Mauritius and the Maldives. Belying its dry nomenclature, this case has implications well beyond the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The Special Chamber dismissed the jurisdictional objections of the Maldives and proceeded on the basis that Mauritius is the relevant sovereign coastal state for the Chagos Archipelago, following the 2019 Advisory Opinion of the ICJ on the Legal Consequences of the Separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965 notwithstanding the non-binding status of the advisory decision. This decision has implications for how we characterise ‘law’, the continuing relevance of consent to the international legal system and the authoritative nature of international law.