The Effect of the International Court of Justice on Environmental Issues

Abstract

Environmental issues are an important in both domestic and international contexts, and may be subject to an International Court of Justice Decision, or any other international judicial institution.  The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is the main judicial body of the United Nations, which has both a contentious and an advisory jurisdiction in its decisions. We study the Court's performance in environmental issues in this article. By examining four issues: first, the contentious and advisory tasks; second, the role of environmental organizations; third, the Trail Smelter case (between the United States and Canada), which is the legal basis of international law in the environmental issues, and; fourth, evaluating the Court's performance in eight judgments in the following cases: 1) The status of the environment in the court; 2) the Corfu case (between Albania and the United Kingdom); 3) the Lennox Lake case (between France and Spain); 4) the Mills case (between Uruguay and Argentina); 5) the Oder River case (between Poland and some European countries); 6) Aerial Herbicide Spraying (between Colombia and Ecuador). Because of the current contemporary status of international law and international environmental law, the International Court of Justice, has departed from their traditional approach because of the evolution of legal intellectual and thought on environmental issues. They focus on the general order of the international community as well as on pollution issues.