ReSolution Issue 19, November 2018 | Page 5

No more ‘moonlighting’ for International Court of Justice Judges
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations (UN).
It was established by the United Nations Charter in June 1945 and began its activities in April 1946. The seat of the Court is at the Peace Palace in The Hague (Netherlands). Of the six principal organs of the United Nations, it is the only one not located in New York. The Court has a twofold role: first, to settle, in accordance with international law, legal disputes submitted to it by States (its judgments have binding force and are without appeal for the parties concerned); and, second, to give advisory opinions on legal questions referred to it by duly authorized United Nations organs and agencies of the system. The Court is composed of 15 judges elected for a nine-year term by the General Assembly and the Security Council of the United Nations. Independent of the United Nations Secretariat, it is assisted by a Registry, its own international secretariat, whose activities are both judicial and diplomatic, as well as administrative. The official languages of the Court are French and English. Also known as the “World Court”, it is the only court of a universal character with general jurisdiction.
The Court is regulated by the ICJ Statute, which provides in its Article 16 that “no member of the Court may exercise any political or administrative function, or engage in any other occupation of a professional nature”.
In a report published by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) titled “Is ‘Moonlighting’ a Problem? The role of ICJ Judges in ISDS”, researchers Nathalie Bernasconi-Osterwalder and Martin Dietrich Brauch analysed the contents of several public databases of Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) cases, and found that ICJ judges had sat as arbitrators in roughly 10% of all known ISDS cases during their tenure. At least seven
judges at the ICJ at the time of publishing (and 13 former judges) had worked (or were working at the time of the report) as arbitrators in treaty-based ISDS cases during their terms at the ICJ. This in the context first, that the ICJ pays each judge a tax free annual salary of roughly US$173,000 (as of 2016), plus a post-adjustment allowance for living and working in the Netherlands and after leaving the court, judges receive an annual pension equal to 50 per cent of the annual base salary and second, that between 1 August 2017 and October 2018, the Court’s docket has remained extremely full in what has been a particularly busy and productive period for the Court.