James was a Judge of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in Hamburg, Germany from 2005 to 2023. He is a Member of the Institut de Droit international¹ since 2009 and was elected as Second Vice President from 2019 to 2021. He served as Judge ad hoc of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the case of Armed Activities on the Territory of the Congo (DRC v Uganda) (2003 – 2005) and in the case of concerning Immunities and Criminal Proceedings (Equatorial Guinea v France) from 2016 to 2020. He was an Arbitrator in the Arbitration between the Republic of Mauritius and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland concerning the Proclamation of a Marine Protected Area in the Chagos Archipelago (2011 – 2015) and in the Duzgit arbitration (Malta v Sao Tome & Principe from 2013 to 2019). He was a member of the International Law Commission (ILC) for ten years (1997 to 2006).²

He was a Partner of the South Law Chambers and an Advocate of the High Court of Tanzania Mainland.

He was Legal Adviser of Tanzania’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs for six years (1983-1989).

James served as Tanzania’s Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany (1989-1994) with concurrent accreditation to Austria, Switzerland, the Holy See, Romania and Poland. He was transferred to the Russian Federation from 1994 to 1998. He then moved to Stockholm as Ambassador of Tanzania to Sweden (1998-2005) where he became the Dean of the diplomatic corps from 2003-2005. He was concurrently accredited to Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland and the Baltic Republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. He was the Dean of Tanzania Ambassadors (2004-2005)

James participated in many international conferences, including the Third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea (1973-1982); the London IMO Conferences that adopted the 1972 Anti-Dumping Convention and the 1973 Marine Pollution Convention; the 1977 Conference that led to the Vienna Convention on Succession of States in respect of treaties and the conference that adopted the Convention against the taking of hostages.

Judge Kateka has written numerous articles for various legal publicationsⁱ. He has also given lectures on international law, including on the law of the sea at the IFLOS Summer Academy and the Nippon Fellows Programme.

He is a member of the American Society of International Law and the British Institute of International and Comparative Law. In 1993, he was awarded the Papal Honour of the Grand Cross with the Star of the Order of Pius IX by Pope John Paul II in recognition of James’ mission during his accreditation to the Holy See (1990 – 1994).

i “The ‘Tanzania National Report’”, Legal Aspects of Protecting and Managing the Marine and Coastal Environment of the Eastern African Region, UNEP Regional Seas Reports, No. 49, 1984; “The Forty Ninth Session of the United Nations International Law Commission”, African Yearbook of International Law (AYIL), vol. 5 (1997); “The Fiftieth Session of the ILC”, AYIL, vol. 6 (1998); “The Fifty-first Session of the ILC”, AYIL, vol. 7 (1999); “The Fifty-second Session of the ILC”, AYIL, vol. 8 (2000); “The Fifty-third Session of the ILC”, AYIL, vol. 9 (2001); “Diplomatic Protection”, The Protection of the Individual in International Law – Essays in Honour of John Dugard, Th. Skouteris and A. Vermeer-Kunzli (eds), 2007; “Landlocked Developing Countries and the Law of the Sea”, in: International Law between Universalism and Fragmentation-Festschrift Gerhard Hafner, I. Buffard, J. Crawford, A. Pellet and St. Wittich (eds) (2008); “Protection and Preservation of the Marine Environment in the Area under UNCLOS”, in: Coexistence, Cooperation and Solidarity: Liber Amicorum Rüdiger Wolfrum, Holger P. Hestermeyer et al. (eds), 2011; “Africa and the ITLOS”, in: Africa and International Law: Reflections on the International Organization – Liber Amicorum Raymond Ranjeva, M. Kamga, M.M. Mbengue (eds.), 2012; “Piracy and Armed Robbery”, in: International Law of the Sea, Essays in Memory of Anatoly L. Kolodkin, Roman A. Kolodkin (ed.), 2013; “Advisory Proceedings before the Seabed Disputes Chamber and before the ITLOS as a Full Court”, in: Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law, Vol. 17 (2013); “Land-locked and Geographically Disadvantaged States”, IMLI Manual on International Maritime Law, Vol. I (March 2014); “Combating piracy and armed robbery off the Somali coast and the Gulf of Guinea”, in: Law of the Sea, From Grotius to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, Liber Amicorum Hugo Caminos, L. del Castillo (ed.), Brill Nijhoff, 2015; The ITLOS and Africa, AYIL, Volume 22, 2016.

1 He was elected as Associate Member by his peers – most distinguished international jurists – to join the Institut with the largest majority of all the candidates at the Institute’s Naples session in 2009. He became a titular (full member at the Tokyo session in 2013.

2 He was Chairman of the ILC’s Drafting Committee in 2003.