Symposium
The Proliferation of International Tribunals: Piecing Together the Puzzle
October 1-2, 1998
One need only look to the creation of the International Criminal Court, the large case-load of the World Trade Organization dispute settlement bodies, the emerging jurisprudence of the new Law of the Sea Tribunal, sophisticated decisions of regional dispute settlement bodies in NAFTA and the European Union, and the burgeoning activities of a host of human rights and war crimes courts to realize the upsurge in the number and importance of international tribunals. With this proliferation, however, comes the danger of conflicts with national courts (as in the Breard death penalty case, where the US Supreme Court disregarded a request from the International Court of Justice to stay the execution) and among international courts.
There is no organized hierarchy of authority or jurisdiction among international legal institutions, which creates problems of conflicting jurisdictions, gaps in jurisdiction and enforcement, divergent jurisprudence, procedural inconsistency, and systemic incoherence.
Although most tribunals refer to general international law, bodies such as the World Trade Organization mainly apply a specialized set of rules and are closely connected with a particular trade law constituency rather than, for example, environmental or labor law interests. It is frequently argued that any possibility of a unified “system” of general international law is disappearing with the fragmentation of international dispute settlement bodies. But is this a problem, or an opportunity to develop effective rules to cover quite different situations of trade, human rights, or environmental protection?
New York University School of Law’s Journal of International Law and Politics, the Center on International Cooperation, and the Project on International Courts and Tribunals sponsored a Symposium addressing the proliferation of international tribunals which took place on Thursday, October 1 and Friday, October 2, 1998.
On October 1, the Symposium featured Pierre-Marie Dupuy (University of Paris II), Jonathan Charney (Vanderbilt University Law School), David Kennedy (Harvard Law School), and Hisashi Owada (Ambassador of Japan to the UN and faculty member of the NYU Global Law School) in Panel 1 (“A Unified System of International Law?”). The speakers for Panel 2, “The Constitution of an International Legal System,” included Joseph Weiler (Harvard Law School), Philip Allott (Cambridge University and NYU Global Law School), and Bruno Simma (University of Munich).
On October 2, Panel 3 speakers Christine Chinkin (London School of Economics), Monica Pinto (University of Buenos Aires), Theodor Meron (NYU School of Law), Jose Alvarez (University of Michigan Law School), and Maurice Kamto (Yaounde, Cameroon) discussed the issue of “Fragmentation or Unification Among International Institutions: Criminal and Human Rights Tribunals.” In Panel 4, Florentino Feliciano (World Trade Organization), John Jackson (Georgetown University Law Center), and Kamal Hossain (UN Compensation Commission) explored the issue as it pertains to the World Trade Organization. In the afternoon, Panel 5, “Fragmentation or Unification: the National Dimension,” featured Lori Fisler Damrosch (Columbia University Law School) and other speakers. Finally, in Panel 6 Michael Reisman (Yale Law School), Georges Abi-Saab (Graduate Institute of International Studies and NYU Global Law School), and Philippe Sands (Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development and NYU Global Law School) closed the Symposium with reflections and thoughts on future work.
Audio tapes of the Symposium are currently available in the Media Center of the NYU Law Library. The Journal’s Symposium issue, featuring articles by many of the participants, will be published by the fall of 1999.