The ‘Foreign Legal Policy’ of States and Its Relationship with the ‘Legal Policy’ of the International Court of Justice

Confronting various issues in the international community, international law does not always function in the same way. This is because behind this legal system, like any other system, there are human agents who each understand and interpret the norms and rules of international law according to their own hypotheses and presuppositions. In the meantime, states as the main subjects of the international legal system try to maximize their ‘national interests’ with a special understanding of international law. The present article attempts to analyze the factors involved in such state policies in order to achieve peaceful settlement of international disputes through the concept of ‘foreign legal policy’. The present paper also shows how this policy directs the international dispute resolution system in general and the decisions of the International Court of Justice in particular, and conversely, the Court’s legal policy, in turn, affects the legal policy of the disputing states.