Judicial Activism in International Law--A Conceptual Framework for Analysis

In this article the author provides an analytical framework designed to assess the phenomenon of judicial activism in international law. Although international judicial activism has not attracted much scholarly attention, the increasing importance of judicial decisions in international law raises the question of whether the interaction between judicial bodies and other actors concerned by their activities can be captured through the notion of judicial activism. Offering a pragmatic definition of judicial activism, the article discusses a number of parameters which can be relied on to evaluate judicial activism at the international level and concludes that the actual power that international judges may enjoy depends on numerous parameters ranging from the environment in which they work to the reception of their decisions.