International Court of Justice

The International Court of Justice (ICJ; French: Cour internationale de justice, CIJ) is the only

Since the entry of its first case on 22 May 1947, the ICJ has entertained 191 cases through 13 November 2023.^[3] Pursuant to Article 59 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice, the court's rulings and opinions are binding on the parties with respect to the particular case ruled on by the court.

History

The first permanent institution established for the purpose of settling international disputes was the

The unprecedented bloodshed of the First World War led to the creation of the

In December 1920, following several drafts and debates, the Assembly of the league unanimously adopted the statute of the PCIJ, which was signed and ratified the following year by a majority of members. Among other things, the new Statute resolved the contentious issues of selecting judges by providing that the judges be elected by both the council and the Assembly of the league concurrently but independently. The makeup of the PCIJ would reflect the "main forms of civilization and the principal legal systems of the world".[6] The PCIJ would be permanently placed at the Peace Palace in The Hague, alongside Permanent Court of Arbitration.

The PCIJ represented a major innovation in international jurisprudence in several ways:

• Unlike previous international arbitral tribunals, it was a permanent body governed by its statutory provisions and rules of procedure
• It had a permanent registry that served as a liaison with governments and international bodies;
• Its proceedings were largely public, including pleadings, oral arguments, and all documentary evidence;
• It was accessible to all states and could be declared by states to have compulsory jurisdiction over disputes;
• The PCIJ Statute was the first to list sources of law it would draw upon, which in turn became sources of international law
• Judges were more representative of the world and its legal systems than any prior international judicial body.
• As a permanent body, the PCIJ would, over time, make a series of decisions and rulings that would develop international law

Unlike the ICJ, the PCIJ was not part of the league, nor were members of the league automatically a party to its Statute. The United States, which played a key role in both the second Hague Peace Conference and the Paris Peace Conference, was notably not a member of the league. However, several of its nationals served as judges of the court.

From its first session in 1922 until 1940, the PCIJ dealt with 29 interstate disputes and issued 27 advisory opinions. The court's widespread acceptance was reflected by the fact that several hundred international treaties and agreements conferred jurisdiction upon it over specified categories of disputes. In addition to helping resolve several serious international disputes, the PCIJ helped clarify several ambiguities in international law that contributed to its development.

The United States played a major role in setting up the World Court but never joined.^[7] Presidents Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, and Roosevelt all supported membership, but it was impossible to get a two-thirds majority in the Senate for a treaty.^[8]

Establishment of the International Court of Justice

Following a peak of activity in 1933, the PCIJ began to decline in its activities due to the growing international tension and isolationism that characterized the era. The

• The statute of any new international court should be based on that of the PCIJ;
• The new court should retain an advisory jurisdiction;
• Acceptance of the new court's jurisdiction should be voluntary;
• The court should deal only with judicial and not political matters

Several months later, a conference of the major Allied Powers—China, the USSR, the U.K., and the U.S.—issued a joint declaration recognizing the necessity "of establishing at the earliest practicable date a general international organization, based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all peace-loving States, and open to membership by all such States, large and small, for the maintenance of international peace and security".^[9]

The following Allied conference at

Consequently, the PCIJ convened for the last time in October 1945 and resolved to transfer its archives to its successor, which would take its place at the Peace Palace. The judges of the PCIJ all resigned on 31 January 1946, with the election of the first members of the ICJ taking place the following February at the First Session of the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council. In April 1946, the PCIJ was formally dissolved, and the ICJ, in its first meeting, was elected President José Gustavo Guerrero of El Salvador, who had served as the last president of the PCIJ. The court also appointed members of its Registry, mainly drawn from that of the PCIJ, and held an inaugural public sitting later that month.

The first case was submitted in May 1947 by the United Kingdom against Albania concerning incidents in the Corfu Channel.

Activities

Established in 1945 by the UN Charter, the court began work in 1946 as the successor to the Permanent Court of International Justice. The Statute of the International Court of Justice, similar to that of its predecessor, is the main constitutional document constituting and regulating the court.^[10]

The court's workload covers a wide range of judicial activity. After the court ruled that the United States's covert war against Nicaragua was in violation of international law (Nicaragua v. United States), the United States withdrew from compulsory jurisdiction in 1986 to accept the court's jurisdiction only on a discretionary basis.^[11] Chapter XIV of the United Nations Charter authorizes the UN Security Council to enforce Court rulings. However, such enforcement is subject to the veto power of the five permanent members of the council, which the United States used in the Nicaragua case.^[12]

Composition

The ICJ is composed of fifteen judges elected to nine-year terms by the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council from a list of people nominated by the national groups in the Permanent Court of Arbitration. The election process is set out in Articles 4–19 of the ICJ Statute. Elections are staggered, with five judges elected every three years to ensure continuity within the court. Should a judge die in office, the practice has generally been to elect a judge in a special election to complete the term. Historically, deceased judges have been replaced by judges from the same region, though not —as often wrongly asserted— necessarily from the same nationality.^[13]

Article 3 states that no two judges may be nationals of the same country. According to Article 9, the membership of the court is supposed to represent the "main forms of civilization and of the principal legal systems of the world". This has been interpreted to include

Judges of the International Court of Justice are entitled to the style of His/Her Excellency. Judges are not able to hold any other post or act as counsel. In practice, members of the court have their own interpretation of these rules and many have chosen to remain involved in outside arbitration and hold professional posts as long as there is no conflict of interest.[17] Former judge Bruno Simma and current judge Georg Nolte have acknowledged that moonlighting should be restricted.^[18]

A judge can be dismissed only by a unanimous vote of the other members of the court.^[19] Despite these provisions, the independence of ICJ judges has been questioned. For example, during the Nicaragua case, the United States issued a communiqué suggesting that it could not present sensitive material to the court because of the presence of judges from the Soviet bloc.^[20]

Judges may deliver joint judgments or give their own separate opinions. Decisions and advisory opinions are by majority, and, in the event of an equal division, the president's vote becomes decisive, which occurred in the Legality of the Use by a State of Nuclear Weapons in Armed Conflict (Opinion requested by WHO), [1996] ICJ Reports 66. Judges may also deliver separate dissenting opinions.

In its 77 years of history, only five women have been elected to the Court, with former UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston calling for states to take seriously questions of representation in the bench.^[21]

In 2023, judges elected to take office from 2024 did not include a Russian member, so for the first time, from 2024 there will be no member from the Commonwealth of Independent States. This is also the first time that Russia would not have a judge on the ICJ, even going back to its predecessor, the Soviet Union.^[22]

Ad hoc judges

Article 31 of the statute sets out a procedure whereby ad hoc judges sit on contentious cases before the court. The system allows any party to a contentious case (if it otherwise does not have one of that party's nationals sitting on the court) to select one additional person to sit as a judge on that case only. It is thus possible that as many as seventeen judges may sit on one case.

The system may seem strange when compared with domestic court processes, but its purpose is to encourage states to submit cases. For example, if a state knows that it will have a judicial officer who can participate in deliberation and offer other judges local knowledge and an understanding of the state's perspective, it may be more willing to submit to the jurisdiction of the court. Although this system does not sit well with the judicial nature of the body, it is usually of little practical consequence. Ad hoc judges usually (but not always) vote in favour of the state that appointed them and thus cancel each other out.^[23]

Chambers

Generally, the court sits as full bench, but in the last fifteen years, it has on occasion sat as a chamber. Articles 26–29 of the statute allow the court to form smaller chambers, usually 3 or 5 judges, to hear cases. Two types of chambers are contemplated by Article 26: firstly, chambers for special categories of cases, and second, the formation of ad hoc chambers to hear particular disputes. In 1993, a special chamber was established, under Article 26(1) of the ICJ statute, to deal specifically with environmental matters (although it has never been used).

Ad hoc chambers are more frequently convened. For example, chambers were used to hear the Gulf of Maine Case (Canada/US).^[24] In that case, the parties made clear they would withdraw the case unless the court appointed judges to the chamber acceptable to the parties. Judgments of chambers may have either less authority than full Court judgments or diminish the proper interpretation of universal international law informed by a variety of cultural and legal perspectives. On the other hand, the use of chambers might encourage greater recourse to the court and thus enhance international dispute resolution.^[25]

Current composition

As of 6 February 2024^[update], the composition of the court is as follows:^[26][27]

Name	Nationality	Position	Term began	Term ends
Nawaf Salam	Lebanon	Presidenta	2018	2027
Julia Sebutinde	Uganda	Vice-presidenta	2012	2030
Peter Tomka	Slovakia	Member	2003	2030
Ronny Abraham	France	Member	2005	2027
Abdulqawi Yusuf	Somalia	Member	2009	2027
Xue Hanqin	China	Member	2010	2030
Dalveer Bhandari	India	Member	2012	2027
Yuji Iwasawa	Japan	Member	2018	2030
Georg Nolte	Germany	Member	2021	2030
Hilary Charlesworth	Australia	Member	2021	2033
Leonardo Nemer Caldeira Brant (Replaced Antônio Augusto Cançado Trindade)	Brazil	Member	2022	2027
Juan Manuel Gómez Robledo Verduzco	Mexico	Member	2024	2033
Sarah Cleveland	United States	Member	2024	2033
Bogdan Aurescu	Romania	Member	2024	2033
Dire Tladi	South Africa	Member	2024	2033
Philippe Gautier	Belgium	Registrar	2019	2026
a For the 2024–2027 term

Presidents

#	President	Start	End	Country
1	José Gustavo Guerrero	1946	1949	El Salvador
2	Jules Basdevant	1949	1952	France
3	Arnold McNair	1952	1955	United Kingdom
4	Green Hackworth	1955	1958	United States
5	Helge Klæstad	1958	1961	Norway
6	Bohdan Winiarski	1961	1964	Poland
7	Percy Spender	1964	1967	Australia
8	José Bustamante y Rivero	1967	1970	Peru
9	Muhammad Zafarullah Khan	1970	1973	Pakistan
10	Manfred Lachs	1973	1976	Poland
11	Eduardo Jiménez de Aréchaga	1976	1979	Uruguay
12	Humphrey Waldock	1979	1981	United Kingdom
13	Taslim Elias	1982	1985	Nigeria
14	Nagendra Singh	1985	1988	India
15	José Ruda	1988	1991	Argentina
16	Robert Jennings	1991	1994	United Kingdom
17	Mohammed Bedjaoui	1994	1997	Algeria
18	Stephen Schwebel	1997	2000	United States
19	Gilbert Guillaume	2000	2003	France
20	Shi Jiuyong	2003	2006	China
21	Rosalyn Higgins	2006	2009	United Kingdom
22	Hisashi Owada	2009	2012	Japan
23	Peter Tomka	2012	2015	Slovakia
24	Ronny Abraham	2015	2018	France
25	Abdulqawi Yusuf	2018	2021	Somalia
26	Joan Donoghue	2021	2024	United States
27	Nawaf Salam	2024	present	Lebanon

Jurisdiction

As stated in Article 93 of the UN Charter, all 193 UN members are automatically parties to the court's statute.^[28][29] Non-UN members may also become parties to the court's statute under the Article 93(2) procedure, which was used by Switzerland in 1948 and Nauru in 1988, prior to either joining the UN.^[30] Once a state is a party to the court's statute, it is entitled to participate in cases before the court. However, being a party to the statute does not automatically give the court jurisdiction over disputes involving those parties. The issue of jurisdiction is considered in the three types of ICJ cases: contentious issues, incidental jurisdiction, and advisory opinions.^[31]

Contentious issues

In contentious cases (adversarial proceedings seeking to settle a dispute), the ICJ produces a binding ruling between states that agree to submit to the ruling of the court. Only states may be parties in contentious cases; individuals, corporations, component parts of a federal state, NGOs, UN organs, and self-determination groups are excluded from direct participation, although the court may receive information from public international organizations. However, this does not preclude non-state interests from being the subject of proceedings; for example, a state may bring a case on behalf of one of its nationals or corporations, such as in matters concerning diplomatic protection.^[32]

Jurisdiction is often a

1. Compromis or "special agreement", in which parties provide explicit consent to the court's jurisdiction by referring cases to it. While not true compulsory jurisdiction, this is perhaps the most effective jurisdictional basis, because the parties concerned have a desire for the dispute to be resolved by the court, and are thus more likely to comply with the court's judgment.
2. Compromissory clauses in a binding treaty. Most modern treaties contain such clauses to provide for dispute resolution by the ICJ.^[33] Cases founded on compromissory clauses have not been as effective as cases founded on special agreement, since a state may have no interest in having the matter examined by the court and may refuse to comply with a judgment. For example, during the Iran hostage crisis, Iran refused to participate in a case brought by the US based on a compromissory clause contained in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and did not comply with the judgment.^[34] Since the 1970s, the use of such clauses has declined; many modern treaties set out their own dispute resolution regime, often based on forms of arbitration.^[35]
3. Optional clause declarations accepting the court's jurisdiction. Also known as Article 36(2) jurisdiction, it is sometimes misleadingly labeled "compulsory", though such declarations are voluntary. Many such declarations contain reservations that exclude from jurisdiction certain types of disputes (ratione materia).^[36] The principle of reciprocity may further limit jurisdiction, as Article 36(2) holds that such declaration may be made "in relation to any other State accepting the same obligation...".^[37] As of January 2018, seventy-four states had a declaration in force, up from sixty-six in February 2011;^[37] of the permanent Security Council members, only the United Kingdom has a declaration.^[38] In the court's early years, most declarations were made by industrialized countries. Since the 1986 Nicaragua case, declarations made by developing countries have increased, reflecting a growing confidence in the court.^[39] However, even those industrialized countries that have invoked optional declarations have sometimes increased exclusions or rescinded them altogether. Notable examples include the United States in the Nicaragua case, and Australia, which modified its declaration in 2002 to exclude disputes on maritime boundaries, most likely to prevent an impending challenge from East Timor, which gained independence two months later.^[40]
4. Article 36(5) provides for jurisdiction on the basis of declarations made under the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice. Article 37 similarly transfers jurisdiction under any compromissory clause in a treaty that gave jurisdiction to the PCIJ.

Additionally, the court may have jurisdiction on the basis of tacit consent (