City Research Online

Legal justifications for gender parity on the bench of the International Court of Justice: An argument for evolutive interpretation of Article 9 of the ICJ Statute

Corsi, J. ORCID: 0000-0002-4029-1127 (2021). Legal justifications for gender parity on the bench of the International Court of Justice: An argument for evolutive interpretation of Article 9 of the ICJ Statute. Leiden Journal of International Law, 34(4), pp. 977-1000. doi: 10.1017/S0922156521000443

Abstract

The UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council should amend their rules of procedure to create gender parity on the bench of the International Court of Justice. Only 3.7 per cent of all judges on the ICJ have been women. The UN Charter, ICJ Statute, and long-standing practice of the Court underscore the importance of representation, but the focus has been on geographical representation. Using the law of international organizations, combined with the law of treaty interpretation and international human rights law, this article argues that Article 9 of the ICJ Statute should be interpreted to include a requirement of gender parity. Established practice, subsequent practice, and the UN’s multi-decade gender parity in staffing policy establish an evolutive interpretation of what is required to fulfil equality at the UN and the ICJ. The nomination and election procedures for ICJ judges are sufficiently flexible to facilitate this interpretation.

Publication Type: Article
Additional Information: © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Publisher Keywords: evolutive interpretation, gender, ICJ, international organizations, judges
Subjects: K Law > K Law (General)
Departments: School of Policy & Global Affairs > Violence and Society Centre
SWORD Depositor:
[thumbnail of legal-justifications-for-gender-parity-on-the-bench-of-the-international-court-of-justice-an-argument-for-evolutive-interpretation-of-article-9-of-the-icj-statute.pdf]
Preview
Text - Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.

Download (379kB) | Preview

Export

Add to AnyAdd to TwitterAdd to FacebookAdd to LinkedinAdd to PinterestAdd to Email

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

View more statistics

Actions (login required)

Admin Login Admin Login