Jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice in Contentious Cases: A Hundred Years Old Story of the Flagship of International Justice
Abstract
This paper deals with jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in contentious cases. It looks into functioning of the jurisdiction based on the consent of litigant States, including the limits and impacts of the principle of consent.
Jurisdiction of the ICJ is a legal notion of crucial importance. Its character is determined by the horizontal arrangement of international law.
Some basic knowledge of the background of the mechanism of contentious jurisdiction is needed for comprehension. The historical background and development is of particular relevance here.
The legal source of most of jurisprudence of the ICJ concerning its contentious jurisdiction is Article 36 paragraph 6 of the ICJ Statute. It provides for the compétence de la compétence principle.
Indeed, it is the interplay of the principle of consent and the principle of compétence de la compétence that is the crucial point of the mechanism. Jurisdiction ratione personae is delimited by the monopoly of States regarding the access to the contentious procedure.
A simple basic rule and yet the case-law on the access to the ICJ is affected by certain inconsistency. The jurisdiction ratione materiae is based on consent of parties of the dispute concerned.
There are several ways of accepting the ICJ jurisdiction. De lege lata, the place of the ICJ within the system of methods of peaceful settlement of international disputes is equal to the other methods.