Addresses seven statements on international courts, pointing to their ineffectiveness: (1) International courts do not lead to peace. (2) Contemporary courts are not really the legacy of Nuremburg. (3) War crimes tribunals and truth commissions do not always advance human rights. (4) Only sometimes do war crimes victims demand prosecution. (5) There is no proof that giving amnesty to war criminals encourages impunity. (6) Evidence is weak that war crimes prosecutions deter future abuses. (7) There is no need for the International Criminal Court.
Introduction / Harlan Grant Cohen, Andreas Follesdal, Nienke Grossman, and Geir Ulfstein -- Solomonic judgments and the legitimacy of the International Court of Justice / Nienke Grossman -- The global-local dilemma and the ICC's legitimacy / Margaret de Guzman -- Justice as legitimacy in the European Court of Human Rights / Molly Land -- Legitimacy and jurisdictional overlap : the ICC and the Inter-American Court in Colombia / Alexandra Huneeus -- The legitimacy of the European Court of Justice : normative debates and empirical evidence / Mark Pollack -- The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea : seeking the legitimacy of state consent / Anastasia Telesetsky -- Who decides matters : the legitimacy capital of WTO adjudicators versus ICSID arbitrators / Joost Pauwelyn -- The legitimacy of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes / Andrea Bjorklund -- The human rights treaty bodies and legitimacy challenges / Geir Ulfstein -- Constitutionalization, not democratization : how to assess the legitimacy of international courts / Andreas Follesdal -- Democracy, justice and the legitimacy of international courts / Mortimer Sellers -- Stronger together? : legitimacy and effectiveness of international courts as mutually reinforcing or undermining notions / Yuval Shany
An innovative, interdisciplinary and far-reaching examination of the actual reality of international courts, International Court Authority challenges fundamental preconceptions about when, why, and how international courts become important and authoritative actors in national, regional, and international politics. A stellar group of scholars investigate the challenges that international courts face in transforming the formal legal authority conferred by states into an actual authority in fact that is respected by potential litigants, national actors, legal communities, and publics. Alter, Helfer, and Madsen provide a novel framework for conceptualizing international court authority that focuses on the reactions and practices of these key audiences. Eighteen scholars from the disciplines of law, political science and sociology apply this framework to study thirteen international courts operating in Africa, Latin America, and Europe, as well as on a global level. Together the contributors document and explore important and interesting variations in whether the audiences that interact with international courts around the world embrace or reject the rulings of these judicial institutions. Alter, Helfer, and Madsen's authority framework recognizes that international judges can and often do everything they 'should' do to ensure that their rulings possess the gravitas and stature that national courts enjoy. Yet even when imbued with these characteristics, the parties to the dispute, potential future litigants, and the broader set of actors that monitor and respond to the court's activities may fail to acknowledge the rulings as binding or take meaningful steps to modify their behaviour in response to them. For both specific judicial institutions, and more generally, the book documents and explains why most international courts possess de facto authority that is partial, variable, and highly dependent on a range of different audiences and contexts - and thus is highly fragile.
The article presents a transcript of a roundtable discussion of a number of Russian legal scholars, which was organized by the Center of International Law and International Security at the Institute for Contemporary International Studies (ICIS), Diplomatic Academy, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. They debate Russia's position with regard to international justice in general and international courts in particular. It is essential to understand the prospects of just decisions being made by international courts on cases to which Russia is a party or in which it has a special interest. K. Cargill
"Most studies describing this evolution have either drawn on classical legalistic approaches (see e.g. Aust and Nolte 2016; Keller and Stone Sweet 2008 or Mackenzie, Romano and Shany 2010) or been developed by constitutionalists?often from political science and sociology?preoccupied with mapping the global development and influence of ICs (see e.g. Slaughter 2000; Slaughter 2004; Slaughter and Burke-White 2006; Romano, Alter and Shany 2013 and Alter 2014). While the more classical legal scholarship has been predominated by accounts that outline principles and application of IC case law in national courts, constitutionalists have focused on actual practice, describing the evolution and functioning of ICs more broadly. What has unified both strands of research, however, is the often implicit description of a universal and unidirectional strengthening of legalization and judicialization in global affairs. The present volume puts the question in a different way. We do not from the outset normatively assume that ICs are important and powerful actors or that national actors without further ado cite, embrace or enter into a constructive dialogue with these supranational bodies. Rather what this book does is to ask?from a multidisciplinary perspective?how and to what degree do ICs actually influence, impose constraints on and create loyalty from those actors involved? It is our claim that rather little research has been occupied with the actual effects on the ground for those national courts, political institutions and citizens who are formally governed by the increased judicialization"--
