Ricerc@Sapienza

In the recent judgments concerning the Marshall Islands cases, the Court adopted a particularly strict approach with respect to the determination of the existence of a dispute between the parties to a contentious case. The author argues, first, that this new approach is hardly consistent with the Court’s jurisprudence and, second, that it excessively narrows the scope of the Court’s jurisdiction and may have a number of drawbacks.

The purpose of this chapter is to assess intervention under Article 62 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice through the analysis of some leading cases that have involved Latin American states. These cases represent a major contribution to the clarification of some controversial aspects of intervention and provide us with a unique perspective with which to evaluate the way in which the Court has balanced the protection of the interests of third states with that of the rights of the parties.