Legal Question in International Law in Peru

Re: World Court

Thank you for this interesting question. By "World Court" I presume you mean the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Netherlands.

By its charter, the ICJ only hears disputes between nations. The ICJ does not, as far as I am able to determine, have a bar with formal admission and membership standards as does the Supreme Court of the United States and other U.S. federal and state courts. Presumably, any attorney who appears before the ICJ on behalf of a nation would be a government employee of that nation, or someone hired by that nation for the specific purpose of appearing for that nation before the ICJ. It is not clear that an attorney's membership status with the State Bar of California would necessarily be relevant to the attorney's ability authority to represent a nation before the ICJ, Presumably the nation that is a party to an ICJ proceedings may be represented by an attorney of its choice.

The ICJ, unlike every U.S. state and federal court, has no force of arms available to it to enforce its rulings. While the United States is not among the 65 nations that have submitted to the "compulsory jurisdiction" of the ICJ, the U.S. has on occasion agreed to abide by its decisions on a case-by-case basis.