The International Court of Justice and the Judicial Function

Abstract

Abstract The ascertainment by a court of a principle of law has a constitutive, and not merely a declaratory character. Accordingly, the judicial function plays an important role in the safeguarding of the coherence of the legal system in which it operates. The International Court of Justice, principal judicial organ of the United Nations, is no exception; the most august of all international courts, it sees significant normative force attached to its judgments, and is thus cast as an important player in the process of developing international law. In this book, the Court serves as a heuristic device, a magnifying lens to focus wider theorizing on the judicial role within the international legal process. The central thesis advanced is that the Court, designed to be objective and impartial, is also the institutional embodiment of a delicate compromise between the sovereignty of States and economic and political pressures for a stronger ‘international community’. One cannot properly understand the Court without moving away from a viewpoint which evaluates its work with a pre-conceived notion of its ideal purpose. First are considered the historical aspects of the Court's constitutive Statute and the manner in which it defines its judicial character as an international judicial organ. Secondly, the Court's inner processes are considered. Its drafting process, the value of dissent, the aspiration towards impartiality, and the theory of precedent are examined from the perspective of how the Court constructs its claim to normative authority. Finally, two conceptual issues are considered: its construction of the legal community in which it is situated, and its theory on the completeness of the international legal order in which it operates.

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