World Rule of Law: The Jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice

NE OF THE fundamental prerequisites of a world community functioning under a regime of law and not of arbitrary power is the possession of a court of plenary jurisdiction.The ordinary conception of a court presupposes a tribunal in which persons or groups of persons-in the world community, a fortiori, states-may seek and obtain redress for the violation of their legal rights.It would fly in the face of even the most elementary ideas of the maintenance of legal order to suggest that the defendant in a judicial proceeding could decide for himself or itself whether the charge will be answered or ignored.The right to sue, one of the most salutary of normal human rights, is inseparable from the right to be sued-and the legal duty to accept suit and abide by the decision of the court.Such institution and such custom *The beginning of the academic year 1959-6o marks the first anniversary of the establishment of the World Rule of Law Center at Duke University, essentially as a part of its School of Law.This new educational effort is dedicated to both teaching and research.Its Director and staff conducted in the second semester, 1958-59, a seminar for upper-class and graduate law students under the title World Law, justifying the use of this future-invoking term by the immense and rapid development of the law of the world community during the lifetime of men now living, and because of the unsatisfactoriness, from several points of view, of the expressions "international law" and "qaw of nations."The ideal of a world ruled in accordance with duly-accepted law is the beacon by which the Center strives to guide its work-beamed on doing its bit toward realization.One of its projects now under way is the preparation for publication, early in x96o, of a comprehensive discussion of World Court jurisdiction, with special emphasis upon the efforts of member-states to reserve to themselves the determination of whether an issue is one of domestic, not international, jurisdiction.This article, for which the writer is alone responsible, deals briefly with the subject of that emphasis.It is the second in a series undertaking to set forth salient underlying prerequisites of world rule of law.The first, McClure, World Rule of Law, appeared in i U.

Hali tarjima qilinmagan