Abstract

This lecture interrogates what the structure, role, and influence of international courts would look like if one took seriously the phenomenon of judges as individuals. International judges speak and act separately from the courts on which they sit in a number of formal and informal ways. This includes delivering written and oral dissents, posing questions from the bench, engaging in media appearances, and penning memoirs. I argue that understanding the reasons behind and potential effects of different ways of speaking and acting separately is central to a comprehensive evaluation of the role that judges—as individuals—do and should play within society, domestic or international. Moreover, mapping what judges are actually doing—on and off the bench—improves our ability to weigh the tradeoffs embodied in particular design choices for international judicial institutions and ethical rules. The lecture will draw on the law and practice of separate judicial speech at a range of tribunals to identify the stakes of being attentive to separate judicial behaviour and map the range of consequences that separate judicial practices may have. 

Speaker

Neha Jain is Professor of Public International Law at the EUI from September 2019.

She is on special leave from the University of Minnesota Law School where she has taught since 2012. Jain received her B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) from the National Law School of India University and her B.C.L. and D.Phil. in law from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar.

Prior to joining Minnesota, she was a law research fellow at Georgetown University Law Center and worked at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg. Jain has held fellowships at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study, the Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre of Excellence for International Courts, and the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge. She has also served as a visiting professional in the Chambers Division of the International Criminal Court. 

Jain is the author of Perpetrators and Accessories in International Criminal Law (Hart, 2014) and her work has appeared in numerous journals, including the American Journal of International Law, European Journal of International Law, and Harvard International Law Journal.