International Law 243agenda. These have included cases concerning maritime disputes, including delimita
tion of the North Sea continental shelf, fisheries jurisdiction in the Gulf of Maine,
and the maritime boundary between Cameroon and Nigeria. The court has also ruled
on the legality of nuclear tests, environmental protection, and genocide, among other
issues. Advisory cases, though they do not enjoy the force of law, have been on some
consequential issues, including the construction of the barrier wall in the occupied
Palestinian territories, and Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of in de pen dence. Both of
these were po liti cal issues.
Third, only states may initiate proceedings; individuals and nongovernmental
actors such as multinational corporations cannot. This stipulation excludes the court
from dealing with con temporary disputes involving states and nonstate actors, such as
terrorist and paramilitary groups, NGOs, and private corporations.
State sovereignty limits the applicability of ICJ judgments, unlike the judgments
of national courts, which use pre ce dents from prior cases to shape future decisions. In
real ity, however, the ICJ has used many princi ples from earlier cases to decide later
ones, and it draws increasingly from decisions rendered by national and regional courts.
The ICJ may not have been an impor tant source of law except in a few cases, but
with greater legalization of international issues, there has been an increase in inter
national courts, and an increased willingness by developing countries to use inter
national judicial bodies, especially since the Cold War’s end. These new courts, some 20
permanent judicial institutions and more than 70 other international institutions that
The International Court of Justice occasionally rules on territorial disputes between countries.
Here, in 2013, the ICJ ruled that the contested lands surrounding the Temple of Preah Vihear
on the border between Cambodia and Thailand fell in Cambodian territory.