Judges of the International Court of Justice

Permanent judges

Elections

1946 – 1948 – 1951 – 1954 – 1957 – 1960 – 1963 – 1966 – 1969 – 1972 – 1975 – 1978 – 1981 – 1984 – 1987 – 1990 – 1993 – 1996 – 1999 – 2002 – 2005 – 2008 – 2011 – 2014 – 2017 – 2018 – 2020 – 2021 – 2022 – 2023 – 2025

Succession of seats

The court comprises 15 seats. When the original fifteen judges were elected in 1946, they drew lots to determine which five would have 3-year initial terms, which five would have 6-year initial terms, and which five would have 9-year initial terms. From then onwards, all terms have been nine years, with five seats being up for election every three years. The seats are numbered according to the length of the initial term and then in order of the seniority of the first judge to hold the seat.

There are no formal rules for the allocation of seats other than that no two judges may be nationals of the same country. In practice, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council have each had a permanent seat on the Court, except on three occasions. Between 1967 and 1985, there was no Chinese judge, since 2018, there has not been a judge from the UK and since 2024, there has not been a judge from the Soviet Union/Russia. The remaining seats have been informally allocated by regional groups in the same way as the fifteen seats on the Security Council. Since 1970, the conventional allocation has been three seats to Asia Pacific, three seats to Africa, two seats to Latin America and the Caribbean, two seats to Eastern Europe, and five seats to Western Europe and others. That convention was broken in 2018 when an Asian judge was elected to a seat previously occupied by judges from the Western Europe and others group.

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Judges sitting ''ad hoc''

References

References

1. "All Members".
2. "Cour internationale de Justice | International Court of Justice".
3. "All Judges ad hoc".