International Court of Justice – an overview | ScienceDirect Topics

15.1.4 Litigation

International laws and conventions provide the prescriptive framework and procedures to coordinate behaviours, control conflicts, facilitate cooperation and achieve common values among freelancer countries concerned. If a negociate village can not be reached, all states concerned could demonstrate their commitment to the dominion of external jurisprudence by agreeing to submit specified questions to an international court. The state commitment of all states to ‘ fall back to the principle of law quite than to confrontation and determent would offer hope that the region can move beyond the geopolitical rhetoric that has informed public discourse to date and would serve as a model of accommodation and cooperation between former competitors ’ ( Dutton, 2007, p. 63 ). At present, the major external courts include the ICJ ( 2016 ) and the International Criminal Court ( ICC ), both of which are located in The Hague, the Netherlands. The ICC is the first permanent wave, treaty-based, ICC established to help end impunity for the perpetrators of the most serious crimes of concern to the external community. As two typical examples of the ICC, the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials addressed the war crimes, the crimes against peace and the crimes against world committed during the second World War. In the 1990s after the end of the Cold War, tribunals like the International Criminal Tribunal for the early Yugoslavia and for Rwanda were besides established in The Hague, the Netherlands. Since the ICC does not deal with international limit and territorial issues, it will not be analysed here in contingent. The ICJ ( 2016 ) is the chief international judicial organ of today. It was established in June 1945 by the Charter of the United Nations and began work in April 1946. The seat of the ICJ is in The Hague, the Netherlands. The harbinger of the ICJ is called the PCIJ. The PCIJ held its inaugural ride in the Covenant of the League of Nations in 1922 and was dissolved in 1946. The work of the PCIJ, the first permanent wave external court with general jurisdiction, made possible the clarification of a number of aspects of external law and contributed to its development. between 1922 and 1940 the PCIJ cope with 29 contentious cases between states and delivered 27 advisory opinions. The official languages of the ICJ include English and French. The ICJ is composed of 15 judges, with a double role : ( 1 ) settling legal disputes between states submitted to it by them and ( 2 ) giving advisory opinions on legal matters referred to it by punctually authorised United Nations organs and specify agencies.

The ICJ ’ s function is to settle, in accordance with external law, legal disputes submitted to it by states and to give advisory opinions on legal questions referred to it by authorised United Nations organs and specialize agencies. The ICJ is vested with the power to make its own rules. The ICJ formed its first gear chamber for dealing with a particular case in 1982, its moment, in 1985, and, in 1987, its third gear and fourth ad hoc chambers ( Schwebel, 1987 ). The chamber ’ second operation is set out in the 1978s Rules of Court of the ICJ ( as amended on 29 September 2005 ). Once calculation has taken space, the ICJ will issue a majority opinion. individual judges may issue break opinions ( if they agree with the result reached in the judgment of the woo but disagree in their reason ) or dissenting opinions ( if they disagree with the majority ). No appeal is possible, though any party may ask for the ICJ to clarify if there is a dispute as to the mean or setting of the court ’ sulfur judgment. The ICJ has been criticised with respect to its rulings, its procedures and its authority. many of these criticisms refer more to the general authority assigned to the body by penis states through its charter than to specific problems with the composition of judges or their rulings ( Orozco, 2001 ). As shown in the case of land boundary limit between Honduras and El Salvador, submitted to the ICJ in 1986. Although both governments, Honduras and El Salvador, accepted the ICJ ’ s judgment of 11 September 1992, the ICJ ’ s judgment raised the salience and the stakes of the bilateral dispute, injuring other aspects of bilateral and even triangle relations. In 2002 the two states, together with Nicaragua, submitted an application revision of the 1992s judgment. The ICJ made a second sagacity in 2007, though the definitive boundary line on the ground is hush pending. even though the ‘ litigation ’ is more effective than both ‘ negotiation ’ and ‘ mediation ’, it is not available in cases in which one or more parties do not welcome this kind of authority or are ( partially ) release of the jurisdiction of the ICJ. The ‘ compulsory ’ jurisdiction is alone express to cases where both parties have agreed to submit to its decision, and, as such, instances of aggression tend to be automatically escalated to and adjudicated by the United Nations Security Council ( UNSC ). As of 2010 the ICJ legal power has been accepted by 13 countries, Austria, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Gabon, Georgia, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Luxembourg, Paraguay and Uruguay ; and those that have accepted the ICJ jurisdictions with reservations include Australia, Barbados, Belgium, Botswana, Cambodia, Canada, Congo ( Democratic Republic ), Cote d ’ Ivoire, Cyprus, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, the Gambia, Greece, Guinea, Honduras, Hungary, India, Japan, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Madagascar, Malawi, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Nauru, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Senegal, Somalia, Spain, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Togo, Uganda, and the United Kingdom. It should be noted that as of the year 2016, four of the five UNSC members ( i.e. China, France, Russia and the United States ) and many other major states have not formally accepted the ICJ jurisdictions. Nevertheless, France and the United States have sometimes chosen to apply the ICJ mechanism to settle the external limit and territorial disputes of their own. however, China and Russia have never formally considered applying the ICJ mechanism in their international affairs.

finally, there is still a principal defect for existing international judicial system. International courts or tribunals may have not been tasked with addressing the long-run, hardheaded edge management issues such as the habit of natural transboundary resources, security and access problems or environmental regulative inconsistencies that frequently underlie a boundary or territorial quarrel ( IBRU, 2011, p. 1 ). International arbitration of a boundary or territorial dispute is often the foremost step in what must be viewed by states as long-run peace-building in quarrel surround areas. Without a binding decision made by the arbitration or without any effective external involvement, questions submitted by disputant parties sometimes can not easily be resolved. From the 1960s till the early 1980s, there was a dispute between Canada and the United States over fishing and other resource rights in the Georges Bank at the Gulf of Maine. Under their respective 200-nautical mile limit laws, the United States claimed most of Georges Bank and Canada claimed a certain parcel of it ( see Fig. 15.2 ). In addition, the two countries have besides been disputed over the possession of Machias Seal Island. This island has an sphere of approximately 0.08 sq. kilometer and is located in the Gulf of Maine, around latitude 44°30′10″N and longitude 67°06′10″W. It is approximately 16-km southeast from Cutler, Maine and approximately 19-km southwest of Southwest Head, New Brunswick on Grand Manan Island. North Rock ( latitude 44°32′15″N and longitude 67°05′10″W ) is an exposed rock outcropping located approximately 4 km, north–northeast of Machias Seal Island. It has besides been claimed by both Canada and the United States as separate of the Machias Seal Island boundary dispute .

figure 15.2. The United States–Canada maritime limit quarrel in the Gulf of Maine . reference : ©2010 by Rongxing Guo . To resolve the nautical boundary dispute, Canada and the United States agreed to international arbitration in 1981. The boundary line of the nautical boundary dividing the exclusive economic zones ( EEZs ) and fisheries zones in the Georges Bank at the Gulf of Maine was constituted by the ICJ in an order of 20 January 1982. The ICJ delivered its judgment on 12 October 1984. The ICJ applied criteria of a chiefly geographic nature and used geometric methods appropriate both for the boundary line of the ocean floor and for that of the superjacent waters. As for the plat of the boundary line line, the ICJ divided the deep fishing grounds of Georges Bank about evenly between the United States and Canada. Thereafter, US fishermen have to stay on their side of the boundary, and canadian fishermen are not allowed to cross into the US zone .