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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 September 2017
This article analyzes the 9,203 citations made by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in its cases involving Sudan. To date, few empirical studies have assessed the citation practices of courts and even fewer of international courts. The data is rich. It reveals, for instance, the changing nature of the Court's citations over time, the disproportionate distribution of citations among chambers, the potential impact of party pleadings on citations, and the allocation of citations to previous rulings of the Court, other international tribunals and domestic courts. The article also explores possible explanations for the patterns that emerge and assesses what the patterns may mean for the Court. Unlike most other citation analyses, the study provides the additional benefit of having categorized the citations based on their function, distinguishing for instance between citations that the Court uses to help it decide legal and factual issues, and those it does not.
1 Walsh, D.J., ‘On the Meaning and Pattern of Legal Citations: Evidence from State Wrongful Discharge Precedent Cases’, (1997) 31 Law & Society Review 337 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 338.
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3 Walsh, supra note 1, at 339–40.
4 R. Black, ‘Essays on the Role of Law in Judicial Decision Making’, (2009) All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs), Paper 37, at 44.
5 Sources that judges read but choose not to cite may also impact the development of law, but counting citations is an established, and a much clearer and more reliable, method of determining impact. Kaye, J.S., ‘One Judge's View of Academic Law Review Writing’, (1989) 39 Journal of Legal Education 313, at 313 fn 2Google Scholar.
6 Black, supra note 4, at 45.
7 See, e.g., Manz, W., ‘The Citation Practices of the New York Court of Appeals, 1850-1993’, (1995) 43 Buffalo L. Rev. 121, at 121Google Scholar.
8 S. Sengupta, ‘Omar al-Bashir Case Shows International Criminal Court's Limitations’, N.Y. Times, 15 June 2015, at A9 (noting the Court's lack of the power to arrest and the lack of country co-operation).
9 Despite a great deal of digging, two ICC judgments could not be located. The first, ICC-02/08-110, appears to be a mistaken citation because its case number 02/08 does not exist and the second, ICC-01/04-01/06-796-Conf-tEN, appears to be a confidential document that has not yet been made public.
10 This amount was calculated by manually counting all of the records, available at www.icc-cpi.int, on 11 October 2015.
11 See The Prosecutor v. Abdallah Banda Abakaer Nourain, Corrigendum of the ‘Decision on the Confirmation of Charges’, ICC-02/05-03/09-121-Corr-Red, Pre-Trial Chamber I, 13 March 2011.
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17 Formerly The Prosecutor v. Abdallah Banda Abakaer Nourain and Saleh Mohammed Jerbo Jamus.
18 The Prosecutor v. Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir, Decision on the Prosecution's Application for a Warrant of Arrest against Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir, ICC-02/05-01/09-3, Pre-Trial Chamber I, 4 March 2009.
19 The text and figures refer to ‘Pre-Trial Chambers’ (plural) and ‘Trial Chamber’ (singular) because both Pre-Trial Chambers I and II, but only Trial Chamber IV, were involved in the Sudan cases.
20 Alschner and Charlotin, supra note 2, at 3.
21 The Prosecutor v. Abdallah Banda Abakaer Nourain and Saleh Mohammed Jerbo Jamus, Decision on the Defence Request for a Temporary Stay of Proceedings, ICC-02/05-03/09-410, Trial Chamber IV, 26 October 2012.
22 The Prosecutor v. Al Bashir, Decision on the Prosecution's Application for a Warrant of Arrest, supra note 18.
23 The Prosecutor v. Al Bashir, Decision on the Prosecution's Application for a Warrant of Arrest, supra note 18, para. 201.
24 The Prosecutor v. Al Bashir, Decision on the Prosecution's Application for a Warrant of Arrest, supra note 18, Separate and Partly Dissenting Opinion of Judge Anita Ušacka, para. 3.
25 The Prosecutor v. Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir, Judgment on the Appeal of the Prosecutor against the ‘Decision on the Prosecution's Application for a Warrant of Arrest against Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir’, ICC-02/05-01/09-73, Appeals Chamber, 3 February 2010.
26 A similarly higher rate of citations to academic scholarship in individual opinions than in majority opinions has been observed at the ICJ. Stahn, C. and De Brabandere, E., ‘The Future of International Legal Scholarship: Some Thoughts on “Practice”, “Growth”, and “Dissemination”’, (2013) 27 (1) LJIL 1, at 2, fn 11Google Scholar.
27 Studies of domestic court citations are ambivalent; some have found higher citation rates in dissents while others have found lower. Smyth, R., ‘What Do Judges Cite? An Empirical Study of the “Authority of Authority” in the Supreme Court of Victoria’, (1999) 25 Monash L. Rev. 29, at 42 (higher)Google Scholar; Merryman, J., ‘Toward a Theory of Citations: An Empirical Study of the Citation Practice of the California Supreme Court in 1950, 1960 and 1970’, (1977) 50 Southern California L. Rev. 381, at 392–4 (lower)Google Scholar.
28 The Prosecutor v. Banda and Jerbo, Decision on Stay of Proceedings, supra note 21, paras. 89–150.
29 The Prosecutor v. Banda and Jerbo, Decision on Stay of Proceedings, supra note 21, Concurring Separate Opinion of Judge Eboi-Osuji (‘Concurring Separate Opinion of Judge Eboi-Osuji’), para. 31.
30 Concurring Separate Opinion of Judge Eboi-Osuji, supra note 29, para. 14.
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33 Concurring Separate Opinion of Judge Eboi-Osuji, supra note 29, para. 3.
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39 These figures are from the ICC's Legal Tools site, available at www.legal-tools.org/en/search/. The number of records in the ICC database is not stable because additional documents appear to be added from time to time. On 13 June 2017, there were 195 prosecution and 142 defence records available, making the numbers more comparable.
40 The Prosecutor v. Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, Decision on the Admissibility of Four Documents, ICC-01/04-01/06-1399, Trial Chamber I, 16 June 2008, at 15, para. 24.
41 There were an additional 16 joint prosecution and defence records and nine factually persuasive citations to them.
42 M. Klamberg, Evidence in International Criminal Trials: Confronting Legal Gaps and the Reconstruction of Disputed Events (2013), at 210.
43 Ibid., at 211.
44 Karnavas, M.G., ‘Gathering Evidence in International Criminal Trials – The View of the Defence Lawyer’, in Bohlander, M. (ed.), International Criminal Justice: A Critical Analysis of Institutions and Procedures (2007), 75 at 125Google Scholar.
45 The Prosecutor v. Bahar Idriss Abu Garda, Decision on the Confirmation of Charges, ICC-02/05-02/09-243-Red, Pre-Trial Chamber I, 8 February 2010, at 17.
46 Ibid., at 11.
47 Ibid., at 8.
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