International Court of Justice
All information below from court website:
http://www.icj-cij.org/

The International Court of Justice (ICJ), which has its seat in The Hague, is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations.

Today, the Court is open to practically every State in the world:

ICJ, to which no case can be submitted unless both applicant and respondent are States

A case can only be submitted to the Court with the consent of the States concerned

Jurisdiction ratione personae is not, however, in itself enough. A fundamental principle governing the settlement of international disputes is that the jurisdiction of an international tribunal depends in the last resort on the consent of the States concerned. Accordingly, no sovereign State can be made a party in proceedings before the Court unless it has in some manner or other consented thereto. It must have agreed that the dispute or the class of disputes in question should be dealt with by the Court. It is this agreement that determines the jurisdiction of the Court so far as the particular dispute is concerned — the Court's jurisdiction ratione materiae. It is true that Article 36 of the Charter provides that the Security Council, which may at any stage of a dispute recommend appropriate procedures or methods of adjustment, is to "take into consideration that legal disputes should as a general rule be referred by the parties to the International Court of Justice". In the Corfu Channel case, however, the ICJ did not consider a recommendation by the Security Council to this effect sufficient to confer jurisdiction on the Court independently of the wishes of the parties to the dispute.

The first possibility envisaged here is where the parties bilaterally agree to submit an already existing dispute to the ICJ and thus to recognize its jurisdiction over that particular case.

It can also happen that a dispute is brought before the Court while at the time of the institution of the proceedings only one of the disputing States has validly recognized its jurisdiction over the case in question and the other has not, and that this latter State recognizes the Court's jurisdiction subsequently; this is a fairly rare situation and is known as forum prorogatum (*Mavrommatis Jerusalem Concessions, *Rights of Minorities in Upper Silesia, Corfu Channel). It has also happened ten times that a State has instituted proceedings in the ICJ whilst recognizing that the opposing party has not recognized the Court's jurisdiction and inviting it to do so: hitherto, this has always met with a negative response.

A third means of consent to the Court's jurisdiction is described in paragraphs 2 and 3 of Article 36 of the Statute:

"2. The States parties to the present Statute may at any time declare that they recognize as compulsory ipso facto and without special agreement, in relation to any other State accepting the same obligation, the jurisdiction of the Court in all legal disputes concerning: (a) the interpretation of a treaty; (b) any question of international law; (c) the existence of any fact which, if established, would constitute a breach of an international obligation; (d) the nature or extent of the reparation to be made for the breach of an international obligation.

3. The declarations referred to above may be made unconditionally or on condition of reciprocity on the part of several or certain States, or for a certain time."

States recognizing the compulsory jurisdiction of the Court
(with or without reservations) July 1996

Australia
Austria
Barbados
Belgium
Botswana
Bulgaria
Cambodia
Cameroon
Canada
Colombia
Costa Rica
Cyprus
Denmark
Dominican Republic
Egypt
Estonia
Finland
Gambia
Georgia
Greece

Guinea-Bissau
Haiti
Honduras
Hungary
India
Japan
Kenya
Liberia
Liechtenstein
Luxembourg
Madagascar
Malawi
Malta
Mauritius
Mexico
Nauru
New Zealand
Netherlands
Nicaragua
Nigeria

Norway
Pakistan
Panama
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Senegal
Somalia
Spain
Sudan
Suriname
Swaziland
Sweden
Switzerland
Togo
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Uganda
Uruguay
Zaire

States that have been parties in cases from 1946 to July 1996

Albania
Australia
Bahrain
Belgium
Bosnia and
Herzegovina
Botswana
Bulgaria
Burkina Faso
Cameroon
Cambodia
Canada
Chad
Colombia
Costa Rica
Denmark
Egypt1
El Salvador
Ethiopia
Finland

France Germany
Greece
Guatemala
Guinea-Bissau
Honduras
Hungary
Iceland2
India
Islamic Republic of Iran
Israel
Italy
Lebanon1
Liberia
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
Liechtenstein
Mali
Malta
Namibia
Nauru Netherlands
New Zealand

Nicaragua
Nigeria
Norway
Pakistan
Peru
Portugal
Qatar
Senegal
Slovakia
South Africa
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Thailand
Tunisia
Turkey2
United Kingdom
United States of America
Yugoslavia

Examples of treaties or conventions conferring
jurisdiction on the ICJ

Convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide

Universal copyright convention

Single convention on narcotic drugs

International convention on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination

Convention on the suppression of the unlawful seizure of aircraft

Convention for the suppression of unlawful acts against the safety of civil aviation

International convention against the taking of hostages

United Nations convention against illicit traffic in narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances