Your Guide to International Court of Justice
By: Hannah Corus
If you’re like me, you probably have no clue what the International Court of Justice (ICJ) actually is. You’ve come to the right spot. Imagine this: the room is tense, full of anticipation. Your palms are sweaty as you shuffle your papers going over them for the last time in preparation for delivering your opening speech. The judge signals you that they’re ready, and you sand up from your chair. Your stomach drops as the already stressful room somehow become more stressful. This is it, your month-long studying of the 160-page case is finally going to pay off. Welcome to the ICJ.
This morning I was fortunate enough to get an interview with the busy delegates from Oldham County High School: Evan Myers, Joseph Drury, Jate Longhurst. These three young men had just come out from their first successful hearing. The interview goes as follows:
Q: Can you give me a brief overview of what ICJ is?
A: “Yeah, so we were given a massive case that was done by ICJ a while back and were given a side that we’re supposed to support, so you’re either an applicant or a respondent. You go through the case and develop your own opinion and argument on it: what happened, what the court should’ve done and how it should’ve been handled.”
Q: What does a normal meeting look like?
A: “We’re in this room all day reviewing other resolutions that are in KUNA. We go through everyone’s resolutions and find out if they should be debated in GA or Security Council. When it’s our time, we go into the room connected to us and do our case. We’re gonna do it three times throughout the day. All of the other time we’re working on other resolutions.”
Q: What training/preparation did your position require?
A: “One thing that we did was we met at school. We read over the case and we divided it into sections. The packet they give you is divided into the judgments of the actual case and opinions of different judges. So we reviewed what those were and basically constructed an argument off of what people had already said. The packet they gave us was 168 pages and they give it to you specifically a month before the conference. So, you only have a month of time to really work through it. The hardest part was really deciphering the case as you’re reading through it, as there’s a lot of really weird intricacies and it feels like it contradicts itself 12 different times. We probably didn’t figure out the case until a week before the conference. We literally learned even more during our session too.”
Q: What’s your favorite part about being in ICJ?
A: “The debate was fun. The best part is when you finish your part and the judges start asking the other team questions and you just sit back and watch. Being the applicant you get the last word, which is really powerful to leave it on your statement instead of the other team.”
Q: What case is being discussed/debated?
A: “So it’s basically we have Slovakia and Hungary and they had a treaty to build this dam on the Danube River. Hungary thought it was going to negatively affect the environment. So, they decided to back out of the treaty thinking it was going to violate the treaty by building the dam. In actuality, the dam was not going to affect the environment in any permanent way. So Hungary violated the treaty in that sense. Slovakia then started building this other dam that spanned across the whole river and got in Hungary’s territory. So they not only violated the treaty but broke international law. So the question is: who is in the wrong and what are the reparations that should be done about this dam. We’re on the side of Hungary.”
Although ICJ is one of the smaller programs at KUNA, it requires weeks of preparation, dedication, and organization to successfully argue a side. Delegates have to be able to think and speak on their feet in order to answer the counselor’s questions. ICJ is an intense yet interesting section at KUNA, and it would be a shame to leave the conference without ever knowing what it is.
