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Selecting candidates to the bench of the World Court: (Inevitable) politicization and its consequences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2020

Ksenia Polonskaya
Ksenia Polonskaya*
Affiliation:
Centre for International Governance Innovation, 67 Erb Street West, Waterloo, ONCanadaN2L 6C2 Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) are prominent jurists of high merit. However, little is known about certain extra-legal factors of the candidates that guide states in their selection and appointment process. This article focuses on examining extra-legal factors that matter for states in the selection process. Such extra-legal factors demonstrate that elections of candidates to the Court constitute another aspect of a broader political struggle to define the meaning of international law. The article situates the discussion on the selection process in the broader context of the discussion on biases in international law to suggest that the election of candidates to the Court becomes both an instrument and a procedure for controlling the discourse. The characteristics of the judges thus matter as a proxy to control the production and direction of such discourse. This article then explores the ways in which some states have greater strategic advantage in the selection and election processes that enables them to control the discourse to define the meaning of international law effectively.

Keywords

appointmentsICJpoliticizationselection procedures
Type
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Information
Leiden Journal of International Law , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , June 2020 , pp. 409 - 428
Copyright
© Foundation of the Leiden Journal of International Law 2020

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Freya Baetens and all participants of the conference on legal culture on the international bench. I am thankful to Joshua Karton, Gillian MacNeil and Basil Alexander for our many conversations about biases in international law that inspired me to write this piece. I would like to thank the peer-reviewers and editors for their comments and commitment to this piece.

References

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6 The case on point is the advisory opinion on Western Sahara. Examined in detail in K. Knop, Diversity and Self-Determination in International Law (2002), 117; McWhinney, E., ‘Western and Non-Western Legal Cultures and the International Court of Justice’, (1987), 65 Wash. U. L. Q. 873Google Scholar, at 874.

7 It is a popular exercise in the domestic context as well. Ostberg, C. and Wetstein, M., Attitudinal Decision Making in the Supreme Court of Canada (2011)Google Scholar; Sunstein, C. and Schkade, D., Are Judges Political: An Empirical Analysis of the Federal Judiciary (2007)Google Scholar; Macfarlane, E., Governing from the Bench: The Supreme Court of Canada and the Judicial Role (2013)Google Scholar; Bobek, M., Selecting Europe’s Judges: A Critical Review of the Appointment Procedures to the European Courts (2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goldman, S., Picking Federal Judges: Lower Court Selection from Roosevelt Through Reagan (1999)Google Scholar.

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50 UNGA, Election of Five Members of the International Court of Justice (1975) 2408th Plenary meeting thirties session (UN Doc. A/PV/2408)

51 They are: Manfred Lachs (Poland), Sbigeru Oda (Japan), Salab El Dine Tarazi (Syria), Taslim Olawale Elias (Nigeria), Abdul Hakim Tabibi (Afghanistan), Hermann Mosler (FRG), Edvard Hambro (Norway), Thusew Samuel Fernando (Sri Lanka), Rocheforte Weeks (Liberia), Eero Manner (Finland), Sture Petren (Sweden), Mugo Waiyaki (Kenya), Rudolf Bindschedler (Switzerland), Ambrosio Aybar (Dominican Republic), Charles Onyeama (Nigeria), Patrick Dankwa Anim (Ghana), and Ramon Ruiz Tejada (Dominican Republic). Ibid., para. 11.

52 Ibid., para. 12.

53 Ibid., paras. 24–5.

54 Ibid., at 904.

55 Ibid., paras. 27–8, 30, 34.

56 They are: Jose Sette Camara (Brazil), Richard Baxter (United States of America), Platon Morozov (USSR), Abdullah Ali El-Erian (Egypt), Roberto Ago (Italy), Edilbert Razafmdralambo (Madagascar), H.W.Jayewardene (Sri Lanka), Eero Manner (Finland), Leon Boissier Palun (Benin), and Myres McDougal (United States of America). UNGA, Election of Five Members of the International Court of Justice 40th Plenary Meeting, (31 October 1978) 33 Sess., New York, para. 9.

57 Ibid., para. 10.

58 Ibid., para. 32.

59 Ibid., para. 25.

60 Ibid., para. 22.

61 Ibid., para. 26.

62 Ibid., para. 30.

63 wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978USUNN02852_d.html.

64 wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1975USUNN06010_b.html.

65 wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978MEXICO11343_d.html.

66 wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1975USUNN05757_b.html.

67 wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1975USUNN05973_b.html; wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1975USUNN04177_b.html; wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1975STATE259751_b.html.

68 Supra note 63.

69 wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978GENEVA10704_d.html.

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72 McWhinney, supra note 6, at 888.

73 Ibid.

74 Roberts, supra note 2, at 40.

75 Ibid.

76 I am grateful to one of the peer-reviewers for pointing this out.

77 wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978GENEVA10132_d.html [emphasis added].

78 Ibid.

79 wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978STATE204893_d.html.

80 Ibid.

81 wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978LONDON15579_d.html; wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1975USUNN04937_b.html; wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1975USUNN05432_b.html.

82 Ibid., ID 1975USUNN04937_b.

83 wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978COPENH05333_d.html.

84 Ibid.

85 wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1977STATE278721_c.html.

86 Hernandez, G., The International Court of Justice and the Judicial Function (2014), 138CrossRefGoogle Scholar (confirms that ‘in fact many nominated candidates spend extended periods serving in or close to their foreign ministries or, in the case of academics, have often spent long periods being of counsel to governments on questions of international law’).

87 wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1975LAGOS08428_b.html.

88 Supra note 63.

89 Ibid.

90 L. Dingle, interview with E. Lauterpacht, 2 April 2008, available at www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/1810/197071/Eli%20Lauterpacht%20Interview%206%20transcript%20-%202%20April%202008.pdf;jsessionid=A062D499A329521C98CC6BAABB4556CD?sequence=4, at 13.

91 Ibid.

92 Supra note 69.

93 Judge Platon Morozov (USSR Judge to ICJ 1970–1985).

94 Supra note 69.

95 Higgins, R., ‘Remarks: Harmony and Dissonance in International Law’, (2011) 105 American Society of International Law Proceedings of the Annual Meeting 216Google Scholar, at 218.

96 Dingle, L., ‘A Legal Journey Through the UN, Academia, and the ICJ: Conversations with Dame Rosalyn Higgins DBE, JSD, FBA, QC’, (2015) 15 Legal Information Management 86CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 92.

97 Supra note 65.

98 UNGA, Agenda Item 17, Election of Five Members of the International Court of Justice (1975), 30th Sess, 2408th Plenary Meeting, available at digitallibrary.un.org/record/745297, at 904, para. 12.

99 UN, Yearbook of the International Law Commission (2008), 20.

100 Supra note 64.

101 wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1975USUNN06029_b.html.

102 wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1975USUNN05929_b.html; wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978STATE249842_d.html.

103 wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1975USUNN05898_b.html.

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105 In the domestic settings, judges are often elected/appointed through similar political processes.

106 Procès-verbaux mention it as ‘sociological reality’ (see comments by Adatchi and Phillimore), i.e., the division of states upon great and small powers; and unwillingness of some states (like the UK) to subject itself to the court unless it has a judge at that court. Procès-Verbaux, 105. It is worth noting that Phillimore explicitly acknowledged that the notion of Great Power is context specific and can change over time; Cai, C., ‘New Great Powers and International Law in the 21st Century’, (2013) 24 EJIL 755CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 763–5.

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113 Ibid.

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122 Voeten, E., ‘Outside Options and the Logic of Security Council Action’, (2001) 95 American Political Science Review 845CrossRefGoogle Scholar (discussing power asymmetries for the purpose of vote trading in UN SC context). It also explains the dominance of the P5 in the UN Under-Secretary General positions. House of Commons, Foreign Affairs Committee, ‘The UK’s Influence in the UN, HC 675’, 7 February 2018, questions 49–123, available at data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/foreign-affairs-committee/the-uks-influence-in-the-un/oral/78148.html, at Q113.

123 R. Bernstein, ‘The U.N. versus the U.S.’, New York Times Magazine, 22 January 1984, available at www.nytimes.com/1984/01/22/magazine/the-un-versus-the-us.html.

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128 Ibid.

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132 Ibid.

133 Ibid.

134 Ibid.

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137 Ibid.

138 Ibid

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141 Ibid.

142 Ibid.

143 The Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the United Nations, Letter to the President of the General Assembly, 20 November 2017, available at www.un.org/pga/72/wp-content/uploads/sites/51/2017/11/lection-of-members-of-the-International-Court-of-Justice.pdf.

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146 Ibid.

147 Ibid., para. 8.

148 ‘The UK’s Influence in the UN, HC 675’, supra note 122.

149 House of Commons, Reports, supra note 145, paras. 14, 15.

150 Foreign and Commonwealth Office, ‘Memorandum - Elections to the International Court of Justice’, 27 November 2017, available at www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/foreign-affairs/Correspondence/2017-19/Correspondence-from-the-Foreign-and-Commonwealth-International-Court-of-Justice-elections-28-November-2017.pdf, para. 3.

151 UK’s Influence in the UN, supra note 148, at Q64.

152 House of Commons, Reports, supra note 145, para. 12 [emphasis added].

153 UK’s Influence in the UN, supra note 148, at Q56 (Lord Ahmad: ‘If you look at the results and the different rounds of voting, our pledges were 20 shy of the total membership of the UN General Assembly. In the first round of voting, we received 147 votes. Under normal circumstances, that and the vote that we secured in the Security Council would have meant that he would have been re-elected. The dynamic of the election changed just before we went into the formal process, as you will be aware, because the Indian candidate, who was eventually elected, declared very late. Until that point, the slate was a clear slate; it then became a contested election’).

154 Ibid., at Q86.

155 Ibid., at Q76, 81. As anecdotal evidence, in his testimony, Lord Ahmad references the fact that the Indian Prime-Minister personally lobbied for the Indian candidate. He also indicated that the US delegation pledged support and expressed it strongly in the UNSC.

156 Keith, K., ‘Challenges to the Independence of the International Judiciary: Reflections on the International Court of Justice’, (2017) 30 LJIL 137CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 146.

157 Ibid.