What is the International Court of Justice?

The International Court of Justice (ICJ in short) is the highest court in the world and the only one with
both general and universal jurisdiction. It is open to all Member States of the United Nations and, subject
to the provisions of its Statute, may entertain any question of international law.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations (UN). After
being established in June 1945 by the Charter of the United Nations, it began to work in April 1946. The
Court was created in 1945 and began work in 1946. Its antecedents, however, go back to the time of the
League of Nations as it has inherited the premises and much of the structure and rules of the pre-war
Permanent Court of International Justice. But unlike the Permanent Court, which had a separate
existence from the League of Nations, the International Court of Justice is an integral part of the
United Nations. The United Nations Charter established the Court as the principal judicial organ of the
United Nations1. Its Statute is appended to the Charter and all members of the United Nations are ipso
facto parties to the Statute.2
The seat of the Court is at the Peace Palace in The Hague (Netherlands). Of the six principal organs of the
United Nations, it is the only one not located in New York (United States of America).
The Courts role is to settle, in accordance with international law, legal disputes submitted to it by States
and to give advisory opinions on legal questions referred to it by authorized United Nations organs and
specialized agencies.
The Court is composed of 15 judges, who are elected for terms of office of nine years by the United
Nations General Assembly and the Security Council. It is assisted by a Registry, its administrative organ.
Its official languages are English and French.
The main objective of the ICJ, as devised by the Charter of the United Nations, is that All Members
shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and
security, and justice, are not endangered 3
1 U.N. Charter, art. 92

2 Id. at art. 93.

3 3. Charter of the United Nations: Chapter I: Purposes and Principles, Article 2(3)

In the following paragraphs, we are going to discuss the importance and the limitations of the ICJ in
todays world.

Critical analysis of the International Court of Justice in todays

world
At the time of its establishment, the International Court of Justice was the global communitys only
standing international court. Today, it has been joined by a multitude of courts and tribunals dealing with
matters of trade law, human rights law, international criminal law and the law of the sea, as well as a large
number of ad hoc tribunals4 created for the purpose of hearing a single case. These are, however, a
number of features of the ICJ which set it apart. It has a universality which other courts and tribunals do
not possess. Any of the 192 member States of the United Nations can be parties to cases before it and all
can participate in the vote in the General Assembly to elect the judges of the Court. 5
Today, that universality is more pronounced than ever. 88 States have been parties in cases
before the Court (twenty-five are parties to pending cases). Moreover, they come from all
regions of the world: of the parties to pending cases, six are from Africa, six from Latin
America and the Caribbean, three from Asia, five from Eastern Europe, and five from the
West European and Others Group.6 Forty-three States took part in the recent proceedings on
the request for an advisory opinion regarding the declaration of independence in respect of
Kosovo. All 192 member States of the United Nations took part in the last vote to elect
five judges in 2008.

4 The United Nations Security Council created ad-hoc international criminal tribunals in the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and
Rwanda (ICTR) to address violations of international law during the Yugoslavia conflict and the Rwanda genocide of the 1990s

5 Article 4 of the Statute of the Court provides that the judges are elected by the General Assembly and the Security Council.
The two organs vote separately but simultaneously; a candidate must secure a majority in both organs to be elected. Statute
of the International Court of Justice, 3 Bevans 1179, art. 8-12.

6 These are the regional groups which exist within the United Nations

The Court is also universal in another sense. Unlike specialized courts and tribunals whose jurisdiction is
confined to particular areas of international law (as is the case, for example, with the International
Tribunal for the Law of the Sea), the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice covers the whole
field of international law. The cases currently before the Court include land and maritime boundary
disputes, environmental issues, whaling, the prosecution or extradition of a former head of State,
sovereign immunity and the use of force. Moreover, a glance at the current cases and the recent decisions
of the Court will show that many of the cases have involved issues of great importance to the parties and
often to the global community as a whole.

Starting with the advantages that the International Court of Justice has brought and its importance today,
we must first know that ICJ is quite different from the national courts with which we are familiar. What,
then, is the significance of the Court in international life? It would be easy to conclude that a court which
has no genuinely compulsory jurisdiction and which cannot turn to any of the normal apparatus of the
State (on which national courts can rely) to enforce the judgments which it gives cannot play a significant
role. Such a conclusion would be facile and misleading. Even in the lean years of the 1970s when the
Court heard only a handful of cases, in most of which the respondent boycotted the proceedings, it would
have been wrong to dismiss the Court as irrelevant. Its existence as a means for the impartial adjudication
of disputes, even if little used, had an effect upon decision- making. France boycotted the Nuclear Tests
cases brought by Australia and New Zealand against France in 1973 but it did not ignore them. On the
contrary, the proceedings seem to have played a part in leading France to the decision that it would put an
end to atmospheric nuclear testing, albeit not as early as the applicant States had wished. 7 When the
United States diplomatic staffs in Tehran were taken hostage at the end of the decade, it was to the Court
that the United States turned for the first time in twenty- five years. 8 That case does, of course, reveal
the limits of what the Court could do, because Iran did not comply with the Courts judgment of 24 May
1980 (which required the immediate release of the hostages) until it concluded a broader settlement with
the United States in January 1981. Nevertheless, it is significant that the United States Administration
thought it worthwhile to take the matter to the Court and the judgment seems, at least, to have had some
influence in mobilizing international opinion.

7
8

Nuclear Tests, Provisional Measures, (Austl. v. Fr.), 1973 ICJ REP. 99 (Order of June 22)

United States Diplomatic and Consular Staff in Tehran, Provisional Measures, (U.S. v. Iran), 1979 ICJ REP. 23 (Order of Dec. 19);
United States Diplomatic and Consular Staff in Tehran (U.S. v. Iran) 1980 ICJ REP. 3 (May 24 )

The Court has played an important role in settling a range of disputes which the parties have chosen, by
mutual agreement, to refer to it. Since the end of the 1970s, eleven substantial cases have been
referred to the Court by agreement, most of them concerning land or maritime boundaries. 9 Such cases
do not involve disputes over jurisdiction and, because both parties have opted to refer the case to the
Court, there are usually no difficulties regarding implementation of the judgment concerned. The
availability of a standing international court competent to deal with disputes of this kind and possessing
the authority to grant provisional measures of protection in a case of urgency has been a valuable resource
in helping to resolve disputes and reduce tensions. To paraphrase Lord Halifax, the Court has been an
instrument by which, if States are serious in wanting peaceful settlement of their borders in accordance
with law and are ready to make sacrifices for it, they may find means to do so.
Secondly, even in those cases (which are a clear majority) in which the Court is seized by only one party
to a dispute, the Courts verdict has almost always been accepted, even if reluctantly. In marked contrast
to the position in the 1970s when the respondent States boycotted proceedings in seven of the eight
contentious cases brought before the Court,10 since 1981 there has been only one case (out of fifty) in
which a State has declined to appear and only in the later phase of the proceedings, although many of the
cases involved vigorous challenges to the jurisdiction of the Court. Moreover, a significant number of
cases commenced by unilateral application have proceeded without any challenge to the jurisdiction of
the Court.11

Thirdly, notwithstanding the relative lack of machinery for the enforcement of judgments of the Court, in
practice those judgments have generally been complied with. One example is the judgment in
Libya/Chad. That case concerned a dispute regarding title to territory, in particular a border area known as
the Aouzu Strip. In its judgment of 3February 1994, the Court held, by sixteen votes to one, that the
whole of the disputed area lay within Chad. Yet at that time the Aouzu Strip was occupied by Libya,
which was much the more powerful of the two States. Nevertheless, only two months after the Court gave
its judgment, the two governments concluded an agreement for the withdrawal of Libyan troops and

The following cases were concerned with disputes over title to land territory, including the location of borders: Frontier
Dispute (Burk. Faso/Mali), 1986 ICJ REP. 554 (Dec 22)

10

In Fisheries Jurisdiction (U.K.v.Ice), 1974 ICJ REP. 3 (July 25), Fisheries Jurisdiction (F.R.G. v. Ice.)

11

For a recent example, see Maritime Delimitation in the Black Sea (Rom. v. Ukr.), 2009 ICJ REP. 61 (Feb. 3).

administration from the Aouzu Strip under the supervision of a United Nations mission. 12 Withdrawal
took place shortly afterwards and the entire territory has been administered by Chad since then. Although
the judgment of the Court had merely determined that the disputed area belonged to Chad and had not
specified the measures to be taken for its implementation, it was implicit in the ruling that Libya had to
withdraw from the area. It is also instructive to consider the Courts more recent judgment in the Pulp
Mills case between Argentina and Uruguay. The Court there held that Uruguay had breached its
procedural but not its substantive obligations regarding environmental protection of the river. The
operative part of the Judgment did not call for any action by the parties but, in paragraph 281, the Court
reminded the parties of their duty of co-operation under the Statute of the River Uruguay. The two
governments concluded an agreement regarding co-operation in monitoring the relevant pulp mill shortly
afterwards.13

Fourthly, I want to highlight what I regard as a particular success on the part of the Court, albeit one that
has not always been free of controversy. Between the late 1960s and early 1980s the international law of
the sea underwent dramatic changes. Those changes are reflected in the United Nations Convention on
the Law of the Sea, 1982, but the process of negotiating that Convention (a process which took over a
decade) acted as a catalyst for far-reaching changes in customary international law. The effect of those
changes was significantly to increase the areas of the seabed and the waters above it which fell within the
jurisdiction of coastal States. That process turned huge areas which had formerly been res communis
(the property of all mankind and falling within the sovereignty of no State) into national maritime
territories. It also created hundreds of instances in which the claims of adjacent or opposite States to a
continental shelf, territorial sea and exclusive economic zone overlapped. These factors created a
potential for numerous conflicts. In practice, however, those conflicts have generally been avoided in
large part due to a series of rulings on maritime boundaries which have not only resolved the specific
disputes to which they related but also articulated a body of principles for the determination of
overlapping claims which have built up into a substantial body of law. While some of the decisions in
12 See
13

The Secretary-General, Report of the Secretary-General, U.N. Doc. S/1994/512 (Apr. 27, 1994)

HIS Global Insight Daily Analysis reported, on 16 Nov. 2010

question have emanated from arbitration tribunals14, by far the largest contribution comes from the ten
judgments of the International Court of Justice.
Fifthly, the International Court of Justice promotes the concept of the rule of law. Today, states are more
willing to submit their disputes to pacific settlement or adjustment options. This is particularly true as
regards the work of the Court, as it has delivered more judgments over the last 23 years (63 judgments)
than during the first 44 years of its existence (52 judgments). There are eight principles within this broad
conception of the rule of law, namely: accessibility and clarity, constraint of discretion, equality before
the law, exercise of powers in good faith and within limits (enforced by judicial review), respect for
human rights, availability of dispute resolution procedures, fair trial and compliance with
international law.15 We must also note that in recent years, the importance of the rule of law in world
affairs has been recognized on an increasingly frequent basis by the international community. For
example, in 2005 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the World Summit Outcome document,
in which States recogniz[ed] the need for universal adherence to and implementation of the rule of law
at both the national and international levels and reaffirmed their commitment to an international order
based on the rule of law and international law, which is essential for peaceful co-existence and
co-operation among States16
Lastly, while no-one would argue that the International Court (or any of the other international
institutions) has realized the dreams of some of those who, at the Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and
1907 saw international adjudication as something that would abolish war, it is worth noting the record of
the Court in resolving disputes which had led to outbreaks of fighting. Several of the cases discussed
above, including in particular the Libya/Chad, Burkina Faso/Mali and Cameroon v. Nigeria cases had led
to fighting either before they were referred to the Court or while the cases were pending. In such cases the
combination of provisional measures of protection where appropriate and an effective procedure of
adjudication has halted a number of conflicts in their tracks.

14 See, e.g., the UK-France Continental Shelf Award, (1977) 54 I.L.R. 6

15 Ibid., p. 37 and Chaps. 3-10.

16 2005 World Summit Outcome, General Assembly resolution 60/1, 16 September 2005,
Official Records of theGeneral Assembly, Sixtieth Session, Supplement No. 49 (A/60/49),
para. 134 (a).