The world's highest court has become a Paper Tiger that may actually encourage more wars rather than stopping them.
April 26, 2026
Original Paper
The Court Orders. The Cannons Answer.
SSRN · 6630638
The Takeaway
The inability of the International Court of Justice to enforce its orders signals to aggressors that the law is toothless. Because of the UN Security Council veto, binding legal rulings can be ignored without any real consequence. People generally believe that having a supreme legal authority promotes global peace and stability. This analysis suggests that the court's existence emboldens bad actors by proving that international rules are easily broken. The law becomes a facade that covers for the reality of military power.
From the abstract
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations and the world's highest court for resolving disputes between states. Yet its provisional measures, which carry legally binding force under Article 41 of the ICJ Statute, are increasingly treated as elective suggestions by the very states they are addressed to. This paper examines three landmark cases: The Gambia v. Myanmar (2020), Ukraine v. Russian Federation (2022), and South Africa v. Israel (2024).