Studies On Competing Jurisdictions Of International Judicial Bodies

The 20^th century witnessed the expansion of international law into what were before, by and large, unregulated areas of international relations. However, with the intensification of international interdependence in recent decades, international law's dispute settlement facilities have undergone remarkable changes. This phenomenon has coincided with considerable progress made towards the institutionalization of dispute settlement mechanism, from ad hoc to new permanent procedure. Thus, many states nowadays agree to refer disputes concerning many vital areas of international law to adjudication, and have accepted for this purpose the compulsory jurisdiction, of permanent international courts and tribunals.Unfortunately, the international judicial bodies are facing several sever troubles nowadays which caused by the absence of a central legislative organ, the proliferation of new judicial and quasi-judicial bodies has been sporadic and largely uncoordinated. Additionally, jurisdiction competition will occur under this circumstance which means a certain dispute can be addressed by more than one available forum. In accordance with the research, four elements could be found to explain this competition: firstly, obstacle exists in the application of traditional jurisdiction competition regulation rules, such as lis alibi pendens and res judicata and lack of uniform standard for application; secondly, the increasing number of international judicial bodies claim the compulsory jurisdiction; thirdly, differences in the legal standing of international actors as well as some judicial bodies maintain the over state personal jurisdiction; fourthly, without the specific declaration of the scope of jurisdiction under the conventions which established international judicial bodies.The above mentioned factors leading the jurisdiction competition and will become more seriously under the proliferation of international judicial bodies. Thus, the increasing potential for jurisdictional overlap between international courts and tribunals might lead, in turn, to predicaments normally associated with the phenomenon of concurrent jurisdictions between judicial bodies. Grave practical concerns such as forum shopping, parallel litigation, lack of finality, incompatible judgments, and accelerated fragmentation of public international law. After analyzing the cases concerning jurisdiction completion, such as Ireland versus England and Chile versus EC, one factor can be seen that the state would like to choose an international court or tribunal which realizes maximum profit. Finally, it will lead to the fragmentation of international law without uniform international jurisdiction regulations.In order to try to solving the problem, the author discusses in both legal and political ways and after the discussion the author maintains that the political method seems more moderate which should be applied including the exercise of comity and exchange of information, instead of the reform of international courts and tribunals system.