In a long career as an international arbitrator, Paul Reichler of U.S. law firm Foley Hoag has taken on the U.S., Russia, the U.K. and India.

Now, he's launched legal proceedings against China on behalf of the Philippines over its claim to almost the entire South China Sea – everything within a "nine-dash line" – under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The case is being handled by a tribunal sitting in The Hague.

China Real Time caught up with Mr. Reichler, the son of a famed baseball writer for the Associated Press, in his penthouse apartment in Washington, D.C., with some follow-up questions by email. Edited excerpts:

Where are we in the proceedings?

The Arbitral Tribunal has adopted rules of procedure, which include a schedule. The Philippines is required to submit its memorial (its main written pleading), which addresses both jurisdiction and merits issues, by March 30, 2014. Normally, the respondent state (in this case China) would be given an equal amount of time (eight months) to submit its counter-memorial. Then, in the normal sequence, the parties would have had a second round of written pleadings, with the Philippines getting four or five months to submit a reply, and China getting the same amount of time to submit a rejoinder. However, since China has announced that it will not actively participate in the arbitration, the tribunal only fixed the date for the filing of the Philippines' memorial.