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Citation Practices of the International Criminal Court: The Situation in Darfur, Sudan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 September 2017

STEWART MANLEY Open the ORCID record for STEWART MANLEY [Opens in a new window]
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Abstract

This article analyzes the 9,203 citations made by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in its cases involving Sudan. To date, few empirical studies have assessed the citation practices of courts and even fewer of international courts. The data is rich. It reveals, for instance, the changing nature of the Court's citations over time, the disproportionate distribution of citations among chambers, the potential impact of party pleadings on citations, and the allocation of citations to previous rulings of the Court, other international tribunals and domestic courts. The article also explores possible explanations for the patterns that emerge and assesses what the patterns may mean for the Court. Unlike most other citation analyses, the study provides the additional benefit of having categorized the citations based on their function, distinguishing for instance between citations that the Court uses to help it decide legal and factual issues, and those it does not.

Keywords

citation analysisInternational Criminal Courtinternational criminal lawprecedentsources of law
Type
INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURTS AND TRIBUNALS
Information
Leiden Journal of International Law , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , December 2017 , pp. 1003 - 1026
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation of the Leiden Journal of International Law 2017 

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References

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5 Sources that judges read but choose not to cite may also impact the development of law, but counting citations is an established, and a much clearer and more reliable, method of determining impact. Kaye, J.S., ‘One Judge's View of Academic Law Review Writing’, (1989) 39 Journal of Legal Education 313, at 313 fn 2Google Scholar.

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10 This amount was calculated by manually counting all of the records, available at www.icc-cpi.int, on 11 October 2015.

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19 The text and figures refer to ‘Pre-Trial Chambers’ (plural) and ‘Trial Chamber’ (singular) because both Pre-Trial Chambers I and II, but only Trial Chamber IV, were involved in the Sudan cases.

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38 The numbers of citations in Figure 10 are lower than in Figure 8 because of the omission of concurring and dissenting opinions.

39 These figures are from the ICC's Legal Tools site, available at www.legal-tools.org/en/search/. The number of records in the ICC database is not stable because additional documents appear to be added from time to time. On 13 June 2017, there were 195 prosecution and 142 defence records available, making the numbers more comparable.

40 The Prosecutor v. Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, Decision on the Admissibility of Four Documents, ICC-01/04-01/06-1399, Trial Chamber I, 16 June 2008, at 15, para. 24.

41 There were an additional 16 joint prosecution and defence records and nine factually persuasive citations to them.

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