Ad Hoc Judges

Filter category

Composition of the Bench in ICJ Advisory Proceedings: Implications for the Chagos Islands case.

July 10, 2017

In our previous post we discussed the prospects of the International Court of Justice giving an Advisory Opinion, as requested by the UN General Assembly, on the matter of the separation of the Chagos Archipelago from the territory of Mauritius that was granted independence from the UK in 1968. We focused on whether the ICJ would be likely to refuse to render an Advisory Opinion because the request might be seen as seeking to circumvent the principle of consent. We explained how the ICJ has reinterpreted the principle of consent as it applies to advisory opinions and how the Court has stressed that as an organ of the UN it would not ordinarily refuse a request for an advisory opinion which the requesting organ deems of assistance for the proper exercise of its functions. In deciding whether to give the opinion, the Court will have to consider whether the proceedings relate to a purely bilateral dispute between two states. Against this background, it is worth considering…

Read more

Timor-Leste v Australia: Provisional Observations

March 6, 2014

As has already been reported in this forum, earlier this week the International Court of Justice issued an order indicating provisional measures in Questions Relating to the Seizure and Detention of Certain Documents and Data (Timor-Leste v Australia). The documents and data in question relate to ongoing arbitral proceedings between Timor-Leste and Australia. The documents were…

Read more

Trivia: Cases Where Judge Votes Against National State or Appointing Party

September 20, 2012

In international tribunals it is often the case that a judge will vote in favour of a State that appoints that particular judge or that a judge will vote in favour of their State of nationality where that State is involved in a case before the tribunal. Sometimes, the suggestion is made that these facts show that judges…

Read more

Trivia: Ad Hoc Judges in Agreement

September 16, 2012

Many international tribunals allow for States to appoint ad hoc judges in cases involving that State and where no national of the State is a judge on the Court. It is often said that these judges (and judges of the nationlity of parties)  vote in line with the State that has appointed them (or whose nationality they hold). This seems to be…

Read more

Cases in Which the ICJ/PCIJ Were Evenly Split

September 10, 2012

When I supplied an answer to my earlier trivia question on the ICJ case in which every judge appended an individual opinion, I asked a further question In which other judgment…

Read more