Institute hosts lecture by HE Judge Pieter Kooijmans at Goodenough College

HE Judge Pieter Kooijmans, Former Judge of the International Court of Justice, delivered a lecture hosted by the Institute on 11 December at Goodenough College, London.

The evening was chaired by Lady Hazel Fox CMG QC, Vice-President of the Institute, and the title of Judge Kooijmans presentation was 'The ICJ in the 21st Century: Judicial Restraint, Judicial Activism, or Proactive Judicial Policy?' The full text of Judge Kooijmans talk will be available here soon.

Judge Kooijmans' discussion covered four main areas:

• An examination of the cases in which he was involved during his tenure at the Court from 1997-2006;
• Discussion of his Separate Opinions and his one Dissent, and the considerations that motivated him to write them;
• Noting the collegiate nature of the Court and how individual Judges with an activist or restrictive lean can impact upon its judgments; and
• Making a plea for a balance between activism and restraint, to prevent judicial activism from becoming a self-destructive force given that the Court's jurisdiction is based on the consent of states, or judicial restraint from causing the Court to become stale and cease to have an impact upon the development of international law.
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  Additional reading:
  1. M. Brus, 'Judge Peter Kooijmans Retires from the International Court of Justice' 19 LJIL (2006) 699-717.