Voting Behavior of National Judges in International Courts

It has been assumed in international adjudication that each state in the litigation should be permitted to have a judge of its own nationality on the bench. This practice of employing national judges in international courts is deeply rooted in the history of arbitration and judicial settlement. Responding to a demand for it, the Committee of Jurists in 1920–1921 embodied the plan in Article 31 of the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice. This article was transferred intact to the Statute of the present International Court of Justice in 1945. Whether judges of the nationality of the parties, either in arbitration tribunals or in courts of justice, can be counted upon to be as “independent” as the processes of justice require, and as Article 2 of the present Statute stipulates, is a question of some moment to present-day international justice. It has been suggested as an alternative that a judge on the International Court of the nationality of the litigant should abstain; thus a state with no judge of its nationality on the Court would not be at a disadvantage.