Human Rights Beyond Borders at the World Court: The Significance of the International Court of Justice's Jurisprudence on the Extraterritorial Application of International Human Rights Law Treaties

Abstract

This article uses the case study of the question of whether human rights treaty law applies extraterritorially as a means of exploring the general theme of the value of the International Court of Justice's involvement in human rights, when compared to such involvement by specialist human rights bodies. The Court's express pronouncements on the issue, in the Wall Advisory Opinion, the DRC v. Uganda judgment, and the Provisional Measures Order in Georgia v. Russia, as well as an earlier more general statement in the Namibia Advisory Opinion, are compared to determinations on the issue by specialist courts and tribunals. The article begins by setting out the broader historical context of the ICJ's involvement in human rights issues. It then analyses the different ways in which this involvement can be critically appraised, in the process making the case for the focus adopted herein, on a comparison between the role of the Court and that of specialist human rights tribunals on issues of meaning/interpretation rather than application/enforcement, and, within this, on comparative analysis concerned with the generalist/specialist distinction itself rather than the relative merits of positions taken on the substantive law. Such a focus is then deployed through a detailed critical evaluation of the Court's statements in the decisions indicated. Finally, the article summarizes the significance of the Court's determinations on the extraterritorial application of human rights law, and the broader relevance of these determinations for understanding the role of the ICJ in the field of human rights more generally.