Declaratory Judgments of the International Court of Justice

Abstract

Of all the remedies awarded by the International Court of Justice, easily the most common is the declaratory judgment. For example, the four judgments awarded by the Court in 2012 each involved, or was in full or in part, a declaratory judgment. However, the remedy itself has been the subject of surprisingly little academic analysis, indeed no meaningful analysis at all for more than a decade. In this time the Court’s jurisprudence and practice in the use of declaratory judgments has undergone significant changes, most particularly with respect to the Court’s use of the declaratory judgment as a mode of reparation in the form of satisfaction. This article not only updates the literature to reflect these changes, but develops a broad conceptual framework for the analysis of declaratory judgments, traversing its theoretical underpinnings, jurisdictional basis and categories of use. In light of this framework, it then turns to assess and analyse the Court’s modern use of declarations as reparation.