Procedural Rules In International Justice

Under the Legitimacy of Adjudication´s Perspective

• Introduction
• Difference between Procedural and Proceedings Rules
• The 1899 Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes
  • The Pious Fund for the Californias
    • Compromis of 22 May 1902, signed at Washington
• The UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules
• The OSPAR Convention
  • The MOX Plant Case´s Rules of Procedure

Introduction

In International Justice, procedural rules may be confusing, mainly because they are not organized in a single document, and no legal system connects them logically together. Despite Attempts at uniformization on the grounds of International Law by private and intergovernmental institutions, they have not been able to turn International Law into the same systematic legal structure we met in the domestic legal frameworks of States administered under the rule of law, in general.

From the view of a law practitioner of Roman law, international procedural rules are like loose sheets, and desires for a codification remain alive.

The content of the procedural rules is similar but not equal in international adjudication insofar as they vary from one court to another. Here, we employ court in the strict sense. red as they vary according to the nature of the institution of International Justice, which can be a court in the strict sense or an arbitral tribunal, which can be an ad hoc or institutional organ, as the case may be. Furthermore, there is the concept of arbitral proceedings, which is slightly different from the arbitral rules of procedure due to their subject matter and scope.

This post aims to give some ideas on the issues related to rules of procedure in International Justice.

The Pious Fund Case¹,²³ the first dispute arbitrated under the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 1902, illustrates the variance of arbitration procedural rules and the power the disputants are vested in shaping those rules according to their best interests.

Difference between Arbitration Procedural and Proceedings Rules

1. To learn further about that exciting case, which involved the interpretation of res judicata in international law, it is recommended to read Levie, Howard S. “Final Settlement of the Pious Fund Case.” The American Journal of International Law, vol. 63, no. 4, 1969, pp. 791–93. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2199487. Accessed 27 Aug. 2024. ↩︎
2. See the relevant documents for the Pious Fund Case below. ↩︎
3. The Office of the Historian is also a reliable site to read on that matter. ↩︎