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Judicial Settlement of International Disputes pp 122–155Cite as

A Contemporary, Operational Approach to Court Jurisdiction and Justiciability

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Abstract

Our examination of the International Court of Justice and its approach to Jurisdiction and Justiciability occurs when the Court, in its modern, reconstituted, post-World War II phase, approaches the completion of a half-century of jurisprudence. After a very lean period of the late 1960s and in the 1970s when the Court, in reaction in considerable measure to the public relations disaster of the South West Africa. Second Phase decision of 1966,1 was effectively ignored by most of the member-states of the United Nations for purposes of concrete problem-solving, and when the Court, in consequence, had very few cases on its list, it has now rebounded remarkably in political popularity. In particular, the Court is today actively patronised by the very Third World state-clients that once boycotted its jurisdiction. The political paradox is that it is now the United States which, in the immediate post-World War II years, was the most vocal champion of the Court and of the principle of international judicial settlement, which has now turned its back on the Court, in a signal retreat from its erstwhile positive acceptance of Court jurisdiction.

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Notes

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  19. Thus Anand, in a survey of the first half century of the work of the Court (the “old” Permanent Court, and the “new” International Court) concluded that in only one case, the Austro-German Customs Union case (Series A./B., No. 41 (1931) p. 42), (where there were four interested parties on one side, three of whom had their own nationals on the bench, and two parties on the other side, only one of whom had its own national on the bench), would the absence of a national judge, regularly elected to the Court in the usual way or appointed ad hoc, have changed the final decision in the case. (The Austro-German Customs Union decision was rendered by an 8-to-7 vote).

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  27. Ibid., p. 70.

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  29. Ibid., p. 393.

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  30. Compare Falk, whose “pluralist” jurisprudence, which he sets up in opposition to a “provincial (that is, Western) jurisprudence” and in contradistinction to an ideal but seemingly unattainable “universalist” jurisprudence, is predicated upon the triadic scheme of division — much discussed in a more general United Nations context in the 1960s and the 1970s in connection with the debate over the legally normative, lawmaking quality of U.N. General Assembly Resolutions, — of Western, Marxist, and non-Western.

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  35. “Arrêtons-nous quelques instants sur les deux premiers types de Chambres [Chambres spécialisées et preconstituées, et Chambres ad hoc] qui montrent déjà combien la Cour mondiale n’est pas bâtie du tout sur le système caméraliste. “C’est une première observation importante: la Cour internationale de justice n’a pas été conçue constitutionellement et organiquement à l’image d’autres juridictions permanentes internationales... [qui] siègent en formations restreintes. Or la Cour internationale de justice ne répond constitutionnellement pas du tout à ce schéma; c’est par construction initiale. “Il n’existe pas de division du travail, il n’existe pas de répartition des tâches, il n’existe pas de section; bref il n’existe pas de Chambres ordinaires au sein de la Cour internationale de Justice...

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  36. “Or, il est impossible de reproduire à travers un juge, ou même trois ou cinq, l’équilibre géographique laborieusement obtenu à travers les 15 juges de la Cour. Laborieusement obtenu et toujours contesté de façon latente comme déjà non satisfaisant. Si la composition actuelle de la Cour, dans son kaléidoscope géographique, et dans ses équilibres internationaux, n’est pas encore jugée par certains tout à fait satisfaisante, à plus forte raison y avail-il lieu de craindre, semble-t-il, qu’une formation restreinte telle une Chambre de la Cour, ne puisse pas répondre au voeu d’universalité.”

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  41. The identification, Operational Indices, is Harold Lasswell’s. See, generally, Lasswell and Kaplan, Power and Society. A Framework for Political Inquiry (1950).

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  43. U.N. Charter, Article 17: “(1) The General Assembly shall consider and approve the budget of the Organisation. “(2) The expenses of the Organisation shall be borne by the Members as apportioned by the General Assembly.”

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  45. I.C.J. Reports 1973, p. 99; I.C.J. Reports 1974, p. 253.

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  48. United States Diplomatic and Consular Staff in Tehran (United States of America v. Iran), Provisional Measures, I.C.J. Reports 1979, p. 7; Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1980, p.3.

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  49. Ibid., Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1980, p. 3. (Judge Lachs, Separate Opinion; Judge Morozov, Dissenting Opinion; Judge Tarazi, Dissenting Opinion).

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  50. I.C.J. Reports 1984, p. 169; I.C.J. Reports 1984, p. 392; I.C.J. Reports 1986, p. 14.

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  51. Declaration of Intervention of the Republic of El Salvador, I.C.J. Reports 1984, p. 215.

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  52. Court Statute, Article 63:

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  53. “1. Whenever the construction of a convention to which states other than those concerned in the case are parties is in question, the Registrar shall notify all such states forthwith.

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  54. “2. Every state so notified has the right to intervene in the proceedings; but if it uses this right, the construction given by the judgment will be equally binding upon it.”

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  58. Ibid.

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  59. I.C.J. Reports 1986, p. 14, pp. 170–1.

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  61. Ibid., p. 23.

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  63. Ibid., p. 23.

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  75. Cited in Sturgess and Chubb, Judging the World: Law and Politics in the World’s Leading Courts (1988), at p. 463.

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  76. Aegean Sea Continental Shelf, Interim Protection, Order, I.C.J. Reports 1976, p. 3; Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1978, p. 3. And see Bernhardt, “Das Urteil des Internationalen Gerichtshof im Ägäis-Streit”, Festschrift für Hans-Jürgen Schlochauer (von Münch, ed.), (1981), p. 167.

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  77. U.N. Security Council Resolution 395 (1976).

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  78. I.C.J. Reports 1976, p. 3.

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  79. Ibid., p. 19.

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  80. Ibid., p. 20.

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  81. Ibid., p. 33.

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  82. Ibid.

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  83. Ibid., p. 26. And see generally Klein, “Paralleles Tätigwerden von Sicherheitsrat und Internationalen Gerichtshof bei Friedensbedrohenden Streitigkeiten, Zu Fragen der Zuständigkeit und Organtreue”, in Völkerrecht als Rechtsordnung. Festschrift für Hermann Mosler, (Bernhardt, Geck, Jaenicke, Steinberger, (eds.), (1983), p. 467, p. 469.

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  84. Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1978, p. 3.

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  85. Ibid. In United States Diplomatic and Consular Staff in Tehran, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1980, p. 3, the Court applied similar principles in rejecting, as a purported bar to Court jurisdiction, the simultaneity of the seising of the Court and the seising of the U.N. Security Council with a problem.

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  86. I.C.J. Reports 1971, p. 16.

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  87. U.N. General Assembly Resolution 2145 (XXI), 27 October 1966.

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  88. I.C.J. Reports 1966, p. 6.

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  89. I.C.J. Reports 1971, p. 16.

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  90. Ibid. pp. 299–300.

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  91. Ibid., p. 45.

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  92. Ibid.

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  95. I.C.J. Reports 1984, p. 392, p. 436. Some commentators, in reviewing the issue of concurrent action in the political organs (Security Council, General Assembly), and in the principal judicial organ (International Court), of the United Nations, and the resulting competence-problematic, seek to make the analogy to the problem of Litispendence under Municipal, national law. The attempted analogy would not appear to be legally well-founded, since the Municipal law doctrine is limited to a denial of simultaneous processes before more than one Court at the same time. The old Permanent Court of International Justice took a very restrictive view of the alleged Litispendence barrier, rejecting its application in German Settlers in Upper Silesia and ruling that, to be relevant, it must involve identical action, and the same parties, and a court of the same character. (PCIJ, Ser. A no. 6 (1925), p. 20). See generally, Klein, op. cit., in Festschrift für Hermann Mosler (Bernhardt, Geck, Jaenicke, Steinberger, (eds.)), p. 467, p. 474; Ciobanu, “Litispendence between the International Court of Justice and the Political Organs of the United Nations”, in The Future of the International Court of Justice (Gross, (ed.)), (1976), p. 209; Pellet, “Le glaive et la balance”, in Essays in Honour of Shabtai Rosenne (Dinstein, (ed.)) (1989), p. 529, p. 545. Taking account of the contemporary constitutional evolution of the United Nations and of the International Court, the constitutional separation-of-powers analogy, interpreted in its contemporary, neo-Montesquieuan sense as implying a cooperation and complementarity of the principal U.N. organs in their problem-solving, and not any old-fashioned, artificial division and allocation of competences into abstract, a priori categories, seems more appropriate today. Klein, op. cit., at p. 481, would appear right in stressing the principle of institutional Comity (Organtreue) and the obligations of mutual restraint, inter se, on the part of the principal U.N. organs in exercising their new, cooperative approach.

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  102. Provisional Measures, Order of 10 May 1984, (I.CJ. Reports 1984, p. 169), was decided by a vote of 14-to-l (Judge Schwebel dissenting); Jurisdiction and Admissibility, Judgment, (I.C.J. Reports 1984, p. 392), by votes of 1 l-to-5 (Mosler, Oda, Ago, Jennings, and Schwebel, JJ., dissenting), 14-to-2 (Ruda and Schwebel, JJ., dissenting), 15-to-l (Schwebel J., dissenting) and 16-to-0, on its separate issues.

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  103. Merits, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1986, p. 14, was decided, as to its main substantive-legal issues, by votes of 12-to-3 (Oda, Jennings, and Schwebel, JJ., dissenting).

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  104. Case of Prohibitions, 12 Rep. 65.

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  105. I.C.J. Reports 1984, p. 392, at p. 430.

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  106. United States Diplomatic and Consular Staff in Tehran, I.C.J. Reports 1980, p. 3, p. 19. See the remarks, in this regard, by ex-Judge Mosler, in Festschrift für Karl Doehring (Hailbronner, Ress, Stein (eds.)), (1989), p. 607, p. 619.

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  1. Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada

    Edward McWhinney Q.C. (Professor of International Law and Relations, Membre de l’Institut de Droit International, Membre-associé de l’Académie Internationale de Droit Comparé, Member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration)

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  1. Edward McWhinney Q.C.
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McWhinney, E. (1991). A Contemporary, Operational Approach to Court Jurisdiction and Justiciability. In: Judicial Settlement of International Disputes. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-6796-5_5

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