Declarations by Judges of the International Court of Justice

Abstract

Judges of the International Court of Justice have a variety of vehicles through which they may express their judicial opinions. There are, in the first place, the judgments and opinions of the Court—results of the collegial deliberations—to which every judge may contribute. If, however, the judgment or opinion of the Court does not represent “in whole or in part the unanimous opinion of the judges, any judge shall be entitled to deliver a separate opinion.” And, despite misgivings on the part of some scholars early in the experience of the Permanent Court of International Justice, this right conferred by Article 57 of the Statute of the Court has been consistently interpreted as allowing individual and joint separate and dissenting opinions. Finally, Article 95 of the Rules of Court, adopted on April 14, 1978, provides, inter alia, that “[a]ny judge may, if he so desires, attach his individual opinion to the judgment, whether he dissents from the majority or not; a judge who wishes to record his concurrence or dissent without stating his reasons may do so in the form of a declaration.”