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Expanding the Competence to Issue Provisional Measures— Strengthening the International Judicial Function

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Karin Oellers-Frahm

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In international law, jurisdiction serves the same principal aim as in national law, namely the settlement of disputes in order to maintain (legal) peace and security. In international law, as in national law, judicial procedures take time, sometimes a lot of time, during which the rights at stake may be negatively affected by acts of one of the parties potentially resulting in an ineffective judgment. A remedy against such an occurrence has been developed through an instrument of interim protection by which the court directs the parties to leave the rights as they stand and not to interfere with the situation. Such an instrument appears indispensable in order to ensure that a court or tribunal is able to effectively exercise its function. At the national level, interim protection is usually unproblematic since the competence of the tribunals is mostly comprehensive. In international law, in contrast, the competence of judicial organs is one of the most discussed problems because it depends on the consent of states. Any expansion of competence without an explicit agreement of the states concerned is therefore of utmost significance for the role and the acceptance of international courts and reflects the organizational status of international society. Thus, in the context of the project “Beyond Dispute: Lawmaking by International Judicial Institutions,” the subject-matter of this contribution mostly relates to the role and self-understanding of international judicial organs; it is less concerned with the creation of substantive normative expectations between international subjects. Yet, the expansion of judicial competences fits into the conceptual apparatus of this research as it innovates the legal order and reaches beyond the case at hand. The case of provisional measures provides a particularly fine example of incremental judicial law making through progressive interpretation, supported by a holistic vision of the international judiciary, reciprocal strengthening and later state practice, as well as its functional legitimation and its limits.

Type
IV. Further Fields of Judicial Lawmaking: The ICJ and the CAS
Information
German Law Journal , Volume 12 , Issue 5: Beyond Dispute: International Judicial Institutions as Lawmakers , 01 May 2011 , pp. 1279 - 1294
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

1 The aim of provisional measures as a remedy against “la lenteur de la justice” was explicitly expressed by the Mixed Arbitral Tribunal in the case Ellermann v. Etat polonais, 5 TAM 457, 459 (1924).Google Scholar

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