[Joan Donoghue is a Judge on the International Court of Justice.]
Interdisciplinary Perspectives is an important contribution to the international law/international relations (IL/IR) literature that deserves the attention of scholars and practitioners alike. I am grateful to the editors for inviting me to comment on the interesting chapter by Joost Pauwelyn and Manfred Elsig.
My first exposure to the IL/IR literature was in the early 1990s, when my particular interest was the role that international agreements play in addressing environmental concerns. This literature has helped international lawyers to look beyond treaties to regimes, and has drawn our attention to the distinction between compliance and effectiveness.
Serving as a judge on the International Court of Justice (ICJ), I have had the opportunity again to study the IL/IR literature, as I have pondered the role that an ICJ judgment plays in the resolution of a dispute. There have been studies of compliance with the judgments of the ICJ and other tribunals. In addition, I have been pleased to see scholarly exploration of the more nuanced question of the effectiveness of judgments of tribunals, which calls for reflection of the goals of the tribunal (effective as to what?) and for an examination of the linkages between tribunal outputs and the roles of other actors, such as other UN organs, regional organizations and non-party states. Many of the authors represented in the present volume are important contributors to the study of international tribunals.
Interdisciplinary Perspectives demonstrates that the IL/IR field is diverse and maturing. At the same time, the editors do not overstate its potency. Like Anne-Marie Slaughter in her retrospective at the close of the volume, the editors are less “starry-eyed” (p. 624) than were some earlier adherents.
Much as I welcome the study of international tribunals by IL/IR scholars, I also appreciate that there are obstacles to applying social science disciplines to these institutions. Several challenges come to mind:
