The International Court of Justice is the only international court that adjudicates general disputes between nations, and gives advisory opinions on international legal issues. It is one of the six organs of the United Nations (UN), and is located in The Hague, Netherlands.
Customary international law is an aspect of international law involving the principle of custom. Along with general principles of law and treaties, custom is considered by the International Court of Justice, jurists, the United Nations, and its member states to be among the primary sources of international law.
International law, also known as "law of nations", refers to the body of rules which regulate the conduct of sovereign states in their relations with one another. Sources of international law include treaties, international customs, general widely recognized principles of law, the decisions of national and lower courts, and scholarly writings. They are the materials and processes out of which the rules and principles regulating the international community are developed. They have been influenced by a range of political and legal theories.
The International Court of Justice has jurisdiction in two types of cases: contentious cases between states in which the court produces binding rulings between states that agree, or have previously agreed, to submit to the ruling of the court; and advisory opinions, which provide reasoned, but non-binding, rulings on properly submitted questions of international law, usually at the request of the United Nations General Assembly. Advisory opinions do not have to concern particular controversies between states, though they often do.
Bosnia and Herzegovina v Serbia and Montenegro [2007] ICJ 2 is a public international law case decided by the International Court of Justice.
United States of America v. Islamic Republic of Iran [1980] ICJ 1 is a public international law case brought to the International Court of Justice by the United States of America against Iran in response to the Iran hostage crisis, where United States diplomatic offices and personnel were seized by militant revolutionaries.
Stephen Myron Schwebel, is an American jurist and international judge, counsel and arbitrator. He previously served as judge of the World Bank Administrative Tribunal (2010–2017), as a member of the U.S. National Group at the Permanent Court of Arbitration, as president of the International Monetary Fund Administrative Tribunal (1993–2010), as president of the International Court of Justice (1997–2000), as vice president of the International Court of Justice (1994–1997), and as Judge of the International Court of Justice (1981–2000). Prior to his tenure on the ICJ, Schwebel served as deputy legal adviser to the U.S. Department of State (1974–1981) and as assistant legal adviser to the U.S. Department of State (1961–1967). He also served as a professor of law at Harvard Law School (1959–1961) and Johns Hopkins University (1967–1981). Schwebel is noted for his expansive opinions in momentous cases such as Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, Military and Paramilitary Activities in and Against Nicaragua and Oil Platforms .
The Algiers Accords of January 19, 1981 was a set of obligations and commitments undertaken independently by the United States and Iran to resolve the Iran hostage crisis, brokered by the Algerian government and signed in Algiers on January 19, 1981. The crisis began from the takeover of the American embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979, where Iranian students took hostage of present American embassy staff. By this accord and its adherence, 52 American citizens were able to leave Iran. With the two countries unable to settle on mutually agreeable terms, particularly for quantitative financial obligations, Algerian mediators proposed an alternative agreement model - one where each country undertook obligations under the accords independently, rather than requiring both countries to mutually adhere to the same terms under a bilateral agreement.
Case Concerning the Arrest Warrant of 11 April 2000 (Democratic Republic of the Congo v Belgium) [2002] ICJ 1 was a public international law case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) with a judgment issued on 14 February 2002.
The Corfu Channel case was the first public international law case heard before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) between 1947 and 1949, concerning state responsibility for damages at sea, as well as the doctrine of innocent passage. A contentious case, it was the first of any type heard by the ICJ after its establishment in 1945.
The Oil Platforms case is a public international law case decided by the International Court of Justice in 2003 in which Iran challenged the U.S. Navy's destruction of three oil platforms in the Persian Gulf in 1987-1988. The Court affirmed that it could exercise jurisdiction over the case based on the 1955 Treaty of Amity, Economic Relations and Consular Rights between the United States and Iran but decided with strong majorities against both Iran's claim and the United States' counterclaim.
Charles N. Brower is a former State Department official, international judge, and recognized expert in public international law and international dispute resolution. He has been a judge of the Iran–United States Claims Tribunal since 1983. He has also served as a Judge ad hoc in three cases before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) since 2014. He is currently affiliated with 20 Essex Street Chambers in London, UK.
Bank Markazi v. Peterson, 578 U.S. 212 (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case that found that a law which only applied to a specific case, identified by docket number, and eliminated all of the defenses one party had raised does not violate the separation of powers in the United States Constitution between the legislative (Congress) and judicial branches of government. The plaintiffs, in the case had initially obtained judgments against Iran for its role in supporting state-sponsored terrorism, particularly the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings and 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, and sought execution against a bank account in New York held, through European intermediaries, on behalf of Bank Markazi, the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The plaintiffs obtained court orders preventing the transfer of funds from the account in 2008 and initiated their lawsuit in 2010. Bank Markazi raised several defenses, including that the account was not an asset of the bank, but rather an asset of its European intermediary, under both New York state property law and §201(a) of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act. In response to concerns that existing laws were insufficient for the account to be used to settle the judgments, Congress added an amendment to a 2012 bill, codified after enactment as 22 U.S.C. § 8772, that identified the pending lawsuit by docket number, applied only to the assets in the identified case, and effectively abrogated every legal basis available to Bank Markazi to prevent the plaintiffs from executing their claims against the account. Bank Markazi then argued that § 8772 was an unconstitutional breach of the separation of power between the legislative and judicial branches of government, because it effectively directed a particular result in a single case without changing the generally applicable law. The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and, on appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit both upheld the constitutionality of § 8772 and cleared the way for the plaintiffs to execute their judgments against the account, which held about $1.75 billion in cash.
Iranian frozen assets in international accounts are calculated to be worth between $100 billion and $120 billion. Almost $2 billion of Iran's assets are frozen in the United States. According to the Congressional Research Service, in addition to the money locked up in foreign bank accounts, Iran's frozen assets include real estate and other property. The estimated value of Iran's real estate in the U.S. and their accumulated rent is $50 million. Besides the assets frozen in the U.S., some parts of Iran's assets are frozen around the world by the United Nations.
Rubin v. Islamic Republic of Iran, 583 U.S. ___ (2018), was a United States Supreme Court case brought against the state of Iran by the families of American victims of the Ben Yehuda Street bombings which occurred in September 1997. Under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976, nations cannot typically be sued unless the state can be proved to have provided support for terrorists or acts of terrorism. After a district judge ruled Iran owed $71.5 million to the families of the victims, the families brought several cases to court in an attempt to attach and execute on assets owned by the state of Iran located in the United States.
The Treaty of Amity, Economic Relations and Consular Rights between the United States and Iran was signed in Tehran on August 15, 1955, received the consent of the U.S. Senate on July 11, 1956 and entered into force on 16 June 1957. The treaty is registered by the United States to the United Nations on 20 December 1957. The official texts are in English and Persian. It is sealed by plenipotentiaries Selden Chapin (U.S.) and Mostafa Samiy (Iran). The Treaty has served as the jurisdictional basis for various international legal disputes between the United States and Iran, including the International Court of Justice (ICJ) cases Oil Platforms and Alleged Violations of the 1955 Treaty of Amity, Economic Relations and Consular Rights. In October 2018, the United States provided notice that it would be withdrawing from the Treaty following Iran's use of the Treaty as a basis to challenge the U.S. imposition of sanctions under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in the Alleged Violations case.
Alleged Violations of the 1955 Treaty of Amity, Economic Relations, and Consular Rights is the formal name of a case in the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Iran filed a lawsuit with the Hague-based ICJ against the United States, on 16 July 2018, mainly based on the 1955 Treaty of Amity signed between the two sides on 15 August 1955 and entered into force in 1957, well before the Islamic revolution of Iran. Iranian officials alleged that U.S. re-imposition of the nuclear sanctions was a violation of the treaty. Iran also filed a request for provisional measures. In response, the United States asserted that the lawsuit as "baseless" and vowed to oppose it. Almost a month later, the ICJ heard the provisional measures request. On 3 October 2018, the International Court of Justice issued a provisional measures order requiring the United States "to lift sanctions linked to humanitarian goods and civil aviation imposed against Iran."
Patchak v. Zinke, 583 U.S. ___ (2018), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld the Gun Lake Trust Land Reaffirmation Act, which precludes federal courts from hearing lawsuits involving a particular parcel of land. Although six Justices agreed that the Gun Lake Act was constitutional, they could not agree on why. In an opinion issued by Justice Thomas, a plurality of the Court read the statute to strip federal courts of jurisdiction over cases involving the property and held that this did not violate Article Three of the United States Constitution. In contrast, Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor, both of whom concurred in the judgment, upheld the Act as a restoration of the government's sovereign immunity. Chief Justice Roberts, writing for himself and Justices Kennedy and Gorsuch, dissented on the ground that the statute intruded on the judicial power, in violation of Article III.
Marik String is an American attorney, national security expert, and U.S. Navy officer, who served as Acting Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State from 2019 to 2021.
