The Evolution of the Concept of “Dispute” in Light of the Marshall Islands Case before the ICJ

The International Court of Justice delivered its Judgment on 5 October 2016 in the case of Marshall Islands versus the United Kingdom, India and Pakistan, finding that, lacking jurisdiction, it cannot proceed to the merits of the case. The decision of the Court in the Marshall Islands versus the United Kingdom which is taken with casting vote of the president of the Court has a sui generis character, reflecting the new “judicial policy” of the ICJ towards the concept of “dispute”. In fact, the evolution of the jurisprudence of the Court has been the result of the ongoing change in the history of the Court’s jurisprudence. Indeed, the ICJ changes the content and the scope of legal concepts in order to adopt them with “realpolitik” of the time. By recourse to the legal formalism, the International Court of Justice in the Marshall Islands case, firstly, restrained the scope of “dispute”, and secondly, by creating the criteria of awareness as a prior procedure, formalized the concept of “dispute” in order to manage its “judicial policy” having already faced with the political matter.