World Court digest

de Max-Planck-Institut

The World Court Digest represents a reproduction, in a systematic arrangement, of the views on questions of international law which are expressed in the judgements, advisory opinions and orders of the International Court of Justice as well as in the separate opinions of individual judges. The World Court Digest is a continuation, in a new shape, of the Fontes Juris Gentium, Series A, Sectio I, which, in its first four volumes, cover the decisions of the Permanent Court of International Justice and the Hague Permanent Court of Arbitration and is devoted, in volumes five to seven, to the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice from its establishment until 1985. The period from 1986 to 2000 has been reproduced in the three volumes of the World Court Digest which will be continued periodically in the future. The aim of the Fontes Juris Gentium as well as of its successor, the World Court Digest, is to provide an aid to the study of the decisions of the International Court of Justice owing to its vast importance for the development of international law. The increasing number of judgements and advisory opinions makes it more and more difficult to gain a detailed picture of the Court's jurisprudence and to make it of practical use to governments and international and national lawyers. The reproduction of excerpts from the original decisions in a systematic way and in their actual context provides thus a helpful overview over the judicial views of the World Court on nearly all relevant questions of international law.