The Many Cultures of the International Court of Justice

Abstract In the modern mythology of international law, few institutions are as central as the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Its decisions carry great symbolic weight and captivate the imagination of scholars the world over. Yet, the cultural determinants of the Court’s practices – that is, the ideas, values, symbols, and rituals that guide its activity – remain largely unexplored. With this article, we lay the theoretical groundwork for a proper cultural study of the ICJ. In particular, we describe the Court as the site of a struggle among multiple cultural frames that play out at a personal, a collective, and an institutional level. The overlaps, interactions, and competition among those various frames shape the Court’s system of meaning, inform the social relationships among its participants, and ultimately affect the production of judicial outcomes. Moving from this premise, we discuss three layers of cultural confrontations at the ICJ: the first relating to the individual cultural identities of the Court’s actors; the second to their shared cultural commitments and discourses as international lawyers; and the third to the institutional culture and tradition of the Court itself.