Generally, an adjudicatory body in International Justice may be an arbitral or judicial court (or tribunal). Notice that the eventual difference between court and tribunal is an issue apart. Both can be regarded as synonyms but are not, according to a few scholars. On the difference between courts and tribunals in the context of International Justice, one can read “The Proliferation of International Judicial Bodies: The Pieces of the Puzzle” on the author’s site, Romano.
Here, one considers court and tribunal as equivalent terms to explain the difference between arbitral and judicial courts/tribunals.
is governed by the arbitral law which is created the concerned States, persons, or corportation, through conventions, compromis, agreements, and commercial contracts; the arbitral court renders a binding award upon the disputants, following a procedural rule and according to the law. Arbitral court may be ad hoc or institutional, and it is a flexible adjudicatory body because the disputants have some control over the constitution of the arbitral court, its procedural and proceedings rules, and the applicable substantive law. On that flexibility and the static structure reside the cardinal difference between an arbitral and a judicial court, in the sense that, generally, the judicial court is standing, not ad hoc (except for a few criminal ad hoc judicial bodies, i.e the International Criminal Tribuna for the Former Yugoslavia, for Sierra Leone and for Rwanda, which were instituted specifically to judge crimes related to especial situations). The notion of staticness result that the judicial court is pre-existent to any dispute referred to it, and so fixed are its rules of procedure and proceedings, not having parties a control over its constitution, functioning, and rule os procedure or proceedings. Moreover, the judicial court is more similar to the domestic judicial courts, almost not existing a difference between domestic and international court of arbitration.
The Permanent Court of Arbitration and the International Court for the Settlement of Investment Disputes are examples of institutional arbitration courts. The Ospar Convention-underpinned arbitral court, which adjudicated the MOX Plant case between Ireland and the UK, illustrates an ad hoc arbitration court. The judicial court is underpinned by multilateral intergovernmental conventions; exceptionally, a judicial court may be created by a resolution of the UN Security Council.
The International Court of Justice and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea are samples of judicial courts.