Enforcement of international judicial decisions of the International Court of Justice in public international law

摘要

Enforcement of international judicial decisions of the International Court of Justice has suffered serious negligence in public international law. Thus, the first significance of this thesis lies in dearth of the authoritative legal literature on this topic. Bearing in mind the unprecedented increase interest in international dispute settlement which can be explained by the phenomenon of proliferation of international judicial bodies and in the qualitative and quantitative nature· of contentious disputes brought before the ICJ, non-compliance with the judicial decisions of the Court is definitely to increase. This study has explored the problem of non-compliance with and enforcement of the judicial decisions of the ICJ; a problem that now exists beyond any doubt as Chapter 1 of this study exposes. However, enforcement cannot be directly made without some initial and critical scrutiny into the legal foundations of the bindingness and enforceability of these judicial decisions normally the rules of pacta sunt servanda and of res judicata, to which Chapters 2 and 3 are devoted. Similarly, the problem of non-compliance with and enforcement of judicial decisions should not usefully be considered in the abstract. Thus, Chapter 4 elucidates the legal nature and the scope of judicial decisions that are subject to enforcement. Article 94 (2) of the UN. Charter provides no exclusive authority for the Security Council to be the ultimate and sole enforcer of the judicial decisions of the I CJ decisions nor is there a straightforward and independent enforcement means of international obligations especially those derived from international judicial decisions. Hence, this study explores and involves various players and invests various means to establish a network of enforcement mechanisms available to all States regardless of their position in the international community. In so doing, the rest of the thesis is devoted to judicial enforcement and institutional enforcement respectively. Chapter 5 examines judicial enforcement through the ICJ itself, while Chapter 6 examines the role of domestic courts of States in this process. Injured State could also seek institutional enforcement. Chapter 7 examines the role of the United Nations, while Chapters 8 and 9 deal with the role of regional organisations and specialised agencies in this process respectively. Notwithstanding the indispensability of judicial and institutional enforcement, they are not always successful or predictable or independently adequate. They may fail to be effective or incapable of inducing a defaulting State to comply with its international legal obligations under the judgment of the ICl So, proposals have been advanced to mitigate or to contain this problem. These proposals, however, have suffered from a lack of support in law and practice, and thus other alternative recommendations and suggestions are provided in Chapter 10, which presents also the final conclusions of this study.