Scenarios of Jurisdictional Overlap Among International Courts
Revue Québécoise de Droit International,19.2 (2006)
10 Pages Posted: 28 Jan 2015
Date Written: March 3, 2006
Abstract
When Professor Charney conducted his impressive study in 1998 entitled, “Is International Law Threatened by Multiple International Tribunals?,” his conclusion was optimistic. He found that these tribunals were engaged in the same dialectic. The variety of courts did not pose a threat to the coherence of the international legal system. In short, in his words, “the more the merrier.”
But, eight years later the landscape is different – the ICC did not even exist eight years ago. It is also now apparent that the subject-matter jurisdictions of international courts can overlap, and they can and do end up analyzing the same situations. Admittedly, they are coming from different perspectives and issuing different remedies, but the ICJ is applying the same substantive law on the use of force, the conduct of hostilities and the meaning of international crimes as the ad hoc tribunals and the ICC.
In opposition to domestic legal systems which have rules of procedure governing the relationships among courts, international courts are operating independently. There are no avenues of appeal, formal notions of precedent, or official modes of coordination. There are no rules on what should happen when more than one court has jurisdiction over the same conflict, when courts reach inconsistent decisions, or how one court should treat the decisions of another court.
This paper examines three scenarios of jurisdictional overlap among the ICJ, ICC and ad hoc tribunals.
Keywords: jurisdiction, international law, judicial fragmentation, philippa webb, international dispute settlement, international tribunals
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