The Role of the ICJ in Challenging Times
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
1:30-2:30 pm (Eastern)
VH 202 and on Zoom
Register
About the event:
In recent years, amid intensifying geopolitical tensions and conflicts, the effectiveness of international law and particularly the UN Charter’s obligation that all states settle their disputes peacefully is widely contested. A number of international courts and international dispute settlement mechanisms, such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the dispute settlement system under the World Trade Organization (WTO), have encountered significant institutional and political challenges. Others, such as those governing the arbitration of international investment disputes, are attempting reforms to respond to legitimacy gaps. The International Court of Justice (ICJ), by contrast, has attracted more litigants than ever before as well as high profile requests for advisory opinions that have drawn the participation of unprecedented numbers of states seeking to participate in the judicial process. While the world’s attention focuses on the election of a new UN Secretary-General, the same political organs responsible for that selection – the UN General Assembly and Security Council – are engaged in electing or re-electing a number of judges to a Court that is now seen as the favored international venue for ‘strategic litigation.’ One of those candidates, Paik Jin-Hyun, a former president of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) and an experienced arbitrator for international investment disputes, will share his views on why the judicial interpretation of international law remains popular when that law is itself under severe challenge.
About the speaker:
Judge Jin-Hyun Paik is a leading scholar and practitioner of public international law. He served as a judge of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) from 2009 to 2023, including as its president from 2017 to 2020, and has also acted as an arbitrator in inter-State disputes at the Permanent Court of Arbitration. He taught public international law at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy and Seoul National University and is currently senior adviser at the Center for International Law of the Korea National Diplomatic Academy. A titular member of the Institut de Droit International and former president of the Asian Society of International Law, Paik has published extensively on the law of the sea, international environmental law, international dispute settlement, and international security. He holds an LL.B. from Seoul National University, an LL.M. from Columbia Law School, and a Ph.D. in international law from the University of Cambridge.
Professor José Enrique Alvarez will be the moderator.