The Foundations of International Justice: International Courts’ Outreach to Their Constituencies

About this event

As part of the legalization and judicialization of international relations, international courts—international institutions with independent judges that adjudicate international disputes and render legally binding decisions—have proliferated the international system. These bodies’ ability to perform their core mandate of international adjudication, however, is contingent on the cooperation of a range of actors in their legal regimes. States must delegate authority to international courts; litigants must use the courts for claiming legal rights and promoting legal accountability; and actors must comply with international courts’ binding decisions. This paper shows how international courts—recognizing how the support of these constituencies is foundational for their performance—can move beyond their core adjudicative mandates and adopt outreach strategies for engaging and influencing their constituencies. It highlights the prevalence of outreach activities across international courts, as well as the variation in courts’ outreach objectives and targets (e.g., governments, national judges, lawyers, NGOs). This analysis suggests that international courts’ non-judicial activities and outreach, while largely ignored by the existing scholarship, are important considerations for theorizing international courts’ agency and influence in their regimes, and the judicialization of international relations more generally.