Ricerc@Sapienza

The indispensable party rule is a procedural condition for the exercise of contentious jurisdiction by international courts and tribunals, and therefore it represents a limit of the judicial function. Its main purpose is to strike a balance between the interests of the parties to a dispute and the interests of third parties absent from the proceedings. The discretion that is implicit in the indispensable party notion explains the flexibility with which international courts and tribunals have applied it.

Introduction to Zoom-out n. 61 on "Procedural Law of International Courts and Tribunals: Between Change and Stability".
International procedural law has drawn increasing attention in the last years. This Zoom-out is dedicated to an aspect of international pro- cedural law that nonetheless is generally overlooked, that is, the very characteristics of international procedural rules when conceived of as sources of international law. Basically, two main sets of questions have been submitted to the authors: