Towards Deeper Judicialisation: Explaining Thailand’s Increasing Engagement with International Adjudication

This paper calls attention to a little-noticed phenomenon about the Thai government’s increasing involvement in international adjudication over the last two decades. For the first time, it has participated in the advisory proceedings before the ITLOS, and made oral statements in the advisory proceedings before the ICJ. It has faced the first treaty-based arbitration by a German investor. There has also been an attempt to initiate the proceedings at the International Criminal Court against Thai officials. All of these parallel the government’s extensive participation in the dispute settlement mechanism of the WTO. What accounts for such developments? The paper argues that Thailand’s constantly increasing engagement with international adjudication should be understood as part of the judicialisation of international relations. Specifically, it is shaped by four main conditions. First, the Thai government has cautiously yet constantly expanded its acceptance of jurisdiction of courts and tribunals. Second, the number of potential claimants has exponentially increased. Third, the composition of the international litigator communities has changed, resulting in the significant increase in the number of lawyers willing to pursue new cases. Fourth, Thai government officials are learning to strategically make themselves more visible in the litigator communities.