Voeten: The Politics of International Judicial Appointments

Erik Voeten (Georgetown Univ. - School of Foreign Service) has posted The Politics of International Judicial Appointments. Here's the abstract:

How, if at all, do governments influence the choices that international judges make? This question has justly received ample attention in the literature. Unlike in the study of U.S. judicial politics, however, relatively few of these scholarly efforts have been devoted to the question of how governments use the appointment process to shape the international judiciary. This article evaluates what we know about the politics of international judicial appointments and identifies some areas for future research. International judges are much more diverse in their backgrounds and preferences than is commonly assumed. To some, the prototypical international judge is a committed professional with exceptional moral standards who cares deeply about the advancement of international law and is largely unresponsive to material incentives or political pressures. To others, international judges are more like diplomats who use legal reasoning as a mere guise for making decisions that fit the national interests of the governments that appointed them. Empirical research appears to show that the international judiciary contains examples of both these ideal types as well as many others. More interestingly, this research suggests that this variation can be understood reasonably well by examining the motivations of governments and the institutional details of the appointment process.

Human Rights Committee Election

Today, the States Parties to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights elected nine individuals to serve on the Human Rights Committee for four-year terms beginning January 1, 2009. They were: Michael O'Flaherty (Ireland); Rajsoomer Lallah (Mauritius); Mohammed Ayat (Morocco); Krister Thelin (Sweden); Fabian Omar Salvioli (Argentina); Ahmad Amin Fathalla (Egypt); Nigel Rodley (United Kingdom); Rafael Rivas Posada (Colombia); and Lazhari Bouzid (Algeria). The nine other members of the Committee, whose terms expire on December 31, 2008, are: Abdelfattah Amor (Tunisia); Prafullachandra Bhagwati (India); Christine Chanet (France); Yuji Iwasawa (Japan); Helen Keller (Switzerland); Zonke Zanele Majodina (South Africa); Iulia Antonoanella Motoc (Romania); Jóse Luis Pérez Sanchez-Cerro (Peru); and Ruth Wedgwood (United States).

ICJ: Nominations of Candidates for Election to the Court

On February 5, 2009, the terms of five judges on the International Court of Justice will expire. Earlier this year, the U.N. Legal Counsel, on behalf of the Secretary-General, requested nominations to fill those seats in accordance with the provisions of the ICJ Statute. Nine individuals were nominated (list of candidates here; Secretary-General's memorandum here). They include: Ronny Abraham (France), Awn Shawkat Al-Khasawneh (Jordan), Sayeman Bula-Bula (Democratic Republic of the Congo), Antônio Augusto Cançado Trindade (Brazil), Miriam Defensor-Santiago (Philippines), Christopher Greenwood (United Kingdom), Maurice Kamto (Cameroon), Rafeal Nieto-Navia (Colombia), and Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf (Somalia). Only Judges Abraham and Al-Khasawneh are seeking re-election. The other judges whose terms are expiring - Judges Rosalyn Higgins, Gonzalo Parra-Aranguren, and Raymond Ranjeva - are stepping aside.

Seats on the ICJ are rigidly, albeit informally, allocated in two ways. First, each of the five permanent members of the Security Council has (unofficially) a permanent seat. Second, the remaining ten seats of the fifteen-member body are (also unofficially) allocated by region. Thus, though nine individuals were nominated for five seats, in fact, once the unofficial rules kick in, only certain seats are really up for grabs. This year, two seats for permanent members of the Council and three regional seats (one for Africa, one for Asia, and one for Latin America) are up for election. Assuming these distributions don't change, it's clear that Abraham and Greenwood (who are running "unopposed") will be elected. For the remaining three seats, there are multiple nominations. Cançado Trindade and Nieto-Navia will compete for the Latin American seat being vacated by Judge Parra-Aranguren; Bula-Bula, Kamto, and Yusuf will compete for the African seat currently held by Judge Ranjeva; and Defensor-Santiago and Al-Khasawneh will contest the Asian seat currently held by the latter. I anticipate that Al-Khasawneh, Cançado Trindade, and Kamto will be chosen, but we'll see.