10 September 2014 | CIL Seminar Series
The International Court of Justice: Process, Protagonists and Potential
Introduction
The International Court of Justice is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. Based in The Hague, it has jurisdiction to hear contentious cases between States, and to give advisory opinions on legal questions referred to it by United Nations organs and specialised agencies. The Court’s docket has dramatically increased in the last decade. Cases recently brought before it have included issues of sovereign immunities, racial discrimination, the use of force, genocide, treaty interpretation, maritime delimitation, boundary disputes, and whaling.
This seminar provided an in-depth view of the internal processes and practices at the Court. It addressed the Court’s mechanisms that take a case from submission to judgment. It discussed the procedures in each stage of contentious cases, from incidental proceedings (preliminary objections and requests for the indication of provisional measures), through the written and oral proceedings, to the deliberations and drafting that lead to judgments on the merits. It also touched upon the processes that lead to an advisory opinion.
An intimate portrait of its architecture gave seminar participants a flavour of the Court’s inner workings and character, with a focus on the composition of the bench, the role of the registry, and the configuration of each judge’s office. The seminar then considered current challenges faced by the Court, as well as the Court’s further potential in fulfilling its mandate to settle international disputes in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.
About the Speaker
Dr. Gérardine Goh Escolar is Legal Adviser to the President of the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal. She is Global Associate at the Centre for International Law, National University of Singapore, and Associate Research Fellow at the Faculty of Law, Leiden University. Geri also assists with various international arbitration cases.
Her previous experience includes four years as the principal legal officer in the Office of H.E. Judge Sir Christopher Greenwood, CMG QC, at the International Court of Justice. She has also been legal counsel with the German federal government, advising the German mission at the United Nations. Geri has taught and directed research at undergraduate and graduate law programmes in the Netherlands, Germany, France, PR China and Singapore.
Geri’s areas of expertise include public international law, international dispute settlement, commercial arbitration, and the interaction of technology, business and the law. Her research publications have been awarded the 2003 Diederiks-Verschoor Medal and the International Academy of Astronautics’ 2010 Social Science Book Award. Her first book, Dispute Settlement in International Space Law (Nijhoff: 2007), remains the best-selling book of its series. She is a contributor to the International Law Reports (Cambridge UP) and the Annotated Leading Cases of International Criminal Tribunals (Intersentia), and is working on her fourth book, International Law and Outer Space (Oxford UP: forthcoming 2015).
Geri received her Doctorate of International Law from Leiden University. She holds a Masters of Law from University College London and a Bachelor of Laws (Hons.) from the National University of Singapore. Geri is a member of the New York Bar.
