Ricerc@Sapienza

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Case Law of the International Court of Justice. – This chapter is aimed at examining the impact of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) on the case law of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). In recent times, the ICJ has enhanced its role in the field of human rights, by contributing significantly to the development of international human rights law. This notwithstanding, and even though States have frequently invoked the UDHR in proceedings before the Court, the
weight of the Declaration in the ICJ’s case law appears rather limited. First, the ICJ’s case law does not confirm the position taken by some scholars that the UDHR constitutes an autonomous source of rights and obligations. Indeed, in the few cases in which the ICJ mentioned the Declaration, it avoided clarifying the origin and nature of the authority of that document. Second, the ICJ has generally failed to mention the UDHR when recognizing the customary nature of certain human rights contained therein. From this point of view, the reference to the inclusion of the prohibition of torture in the UDHR in the 2012 judgment concerning Questions Relating to the Obligation to Prosecute or Extradite represents an absolute novelty. However, one may assume that the ICJ, rather than using the UDHR as a proof of the customary nature of the prohibition of torture, considered it relevant for ascertaining the opinio juris cogentis required for the qualification of that rule as a jus cogens norm.