International Court of Justice (ICJ)

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is the official judicial system of the United Nations (UN), the intergovernmental body that promotes peace and order throughout the world. The ICJ was founded alongside the UN in 1945 and began operating in 1946. Located in the city of The Hague in the Netherlands, the International Court of Justice hears and resolves legal cases brought to it from various member states of the United Nations.

No UN member state maintains permanent delegates to the ICJ. Rather, for regular communication with the court, states rely on their ministers of foreign affairs (or, in the case of the United States, the secretary of state) or their ambassadors to the Netherlands. These individuals discuss their respective countries' affairs with the court's registrar, or recordkeeper.

Operations

The ICJ is composed of fifteen total judges, including a president and vice president of the court. All of these judges must be elected by unanimous vote from both the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council at the organization's headquarters in New York City. Mixed votes are dismissed, and the election bodies must continue voting until an absolute majority elects the new judges.

The ICJ's fifteen judges are elected to nine-year terms in office. The president and vice president of the court, however, serve three-year terms. Their tenures are structured this way so the court may benefit from regularly changing legal perspectives. All judges may be re-elected at the end of their terms.

The ICJ oversees two broad types of legal cases: contentious cases and advisory proceedings.

Contentious Cases

Contentious cases are the most common type heard by the ICJ. Contentious cases are legal disagreements submitted to the court by two UN member states for judgment. Issues brought before the court in such cases include boundary and maritime disputes, use and non-use of force, territorial sovereignty, economic rights, right of asylum, and diplomatic relations.

For the ICJ to hear a contentious case, the states involved in the dispute must have declared the court's authority to be supreme and must abide by its eventual decision. The parties employ agents to serve as their official legal representation during the case. These agents and their teams of assistants hold full sovereign power for the states they represent, and the commitments they make in arguing cases before the court must later be honored by their respective countries.

To open a case before the ICJ, an applicant state first submits a written argument to the court. This argument explains the applicant state's legal dispute with a respondent state and cites its recognition of the court's jurisdiction over the matter. If the registrar accepts the argument, official proceedings before the court begin.

Contentious cases consist of written and oral stages. In the written stage, the opposing states submit pleadings in which they argue their cases and reference the laws they are using to justify their positions. The cases then enter the oral stage, in which the agents argue their points in public hearings. The ICJ judges then deliberate the case privately and publicly announce their ruling. Though rulings may be revised or reinterpreted, they are final and must be obeyed by the involved parties.

Advisory Proceedings

The ICJ also oversees advisory proceedings. These types of cases operate similarly to contentious cases, but they are available only to the individual organizations and agencies of the UN. In advisory proceedings, the court provides its expert legal opinion on various matters to the parties that requested it.

As in contentious cases, advisory proceedings may involve written and oral arguments. The ICJ then issues its ultimate ruling. Unlike in contentious cases, however, the involved parties are not obligated to act on the court's decisions, as they are not legally binding. The rulings serve only as guidance on certain issues of international law.

History

The Charter of the United Nations officially established the International Court of Justice in 1945. However, its origin dates to 1922, when its predecessor, the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ), was founded by the League of Nations. The league was an intergovernmental organization founded in 1920, two years after the end of World War I (1914-1918) to mediate international disputes.

The PCIJ operated nearly identically to the ICJ. It judged legal disagreements between member states, heard contentious cases and offered advisory opinions, and attempted to maintain peace between nations so another great international conflict could be avoided.

The court heard scores of cases from 1922 to 1939. But, by that year, the court judges realized that their normal volume of cases had been steadily declining for years. The PCIJ, in fact, had no business to manage at its public assembly in December 1939. The decline in cases resulted from the outbreak of World War II in Europe, as nations were now engaging in armed conflict instead of peacefully resolving their disagreements in court.

The breakdown of the PCIJ left the members of the failed League of Nations more determined to establish a new international court after WWII. The United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and China began discussing plans for such a court, as well as for a new intergovernmental organization, in the early 1940s.

Ultimately, these and a multitude of other countries founded the United Nations in 1945, the year World War II (1939-1945) ended, with the signing of the Charter of the United Nations. One of the charter's prescriptions was the establishment of the International Court of Justice, which became operational in 1946.

Unlike the PCIJ, the new court would serve member states around the world rather than being limited to European nations. The UN was also able to enforce international peace through its strong coalition of nations acting together, which the League of Nations had not done.

The Twenty-first Century

In 2023, the United Nations General Assembly requested the ICJ’s advisory opinion concerning the legal obligations of nations to limit and prevent human-caused greenhouse gas emissions and protect the environment under international law. Public hearings were held at the Peace Palace in The Hague in December 2024.

In 2024, the ICJ announced changes to Rules of Court Articles 81, 82, and 86. These changes included modifications that gave the Court discretion in whether an intervening state could offer oral arguments. Those wishing to intervene in a case as a third party, states would now have to file a declaration of intervention by the Counter-Memorial submission deadline. Prior to this change, states could file their intention of oral argument any time before oral proceedings began and all arguments were heard. In the 2024 Ukraine v. Russian Federation case, thirty-two states offered oral arguments, which made the timing and scheduling of the proceedings difficult, likely leading to these changes.

Bibliography

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"The International Court of Justice Manual." United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, 2013, legal.un.org/avl/pdf/rs/other‗resources/manuel‗en.pdf. Accessed 1 Jan. 2025.

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McIntyre, Juliette, and Juliette McIntyre "The ICJ Changes the Rules for Intervention." Blog of the European Journal of International Law, 11 Mar. 2024, www.ejiltalk.org/the-icj-changes-the-rules-for-intervention. Accessed 1 Jan. 2025.

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