The International Court of Justice and Migration

Abstract

The ICJ would seem to offer itself as an obvious arbiter in North-South conflicts about migration law. While the lack of consent to the jurisdiction of the ICJ by potential parties might provide some explanation for the scarcity of migration-related judgments, we seem to be left with the image of a potential unfulfilled. The Court is known as a late adopter of innovations in the sphere of international law, and it treads carefully on its path to judgment. Why do states not resort to it more often on issues related to migration law? This is the question driving the present chapter. In pursuit of an answer, I shall proceed in three overall steps. Following the Introduction, in Section 2, I will establish an overview of the few existing cases with a migration law dimension. In Section 3, I shall test two hypotheses explaining the scarcity of cases. Finally, Section 4 will briefly conclude on this chapter.