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THE BANALITY OF GOOD
issues are not redressed, if there is an atmosphere of fear to speak out against
bullying then that puts into guestion the impartiality of the work and advice that
the courts staff may give to judges. In situations of complex litigation, " judges rely
heavily on their staff to assist them in preparing a complex opinion that can go
into the hundreds of pages of reviewing evidence and legal precedent. It is a type
of wotk that reguires trust between the judge and their staff, and if that trust is
broken by the bad behavior of some judges or some staff members then the work
of the court suffers, measured in delays of trials and judgments, but also in the
reputation of the court.
WHAT NEXT FOR INTERNATIONAL JUDICIAL STUDIES
The Report shows that we, the scholars that study ICs, need to expand our research
to encompass the study of IC as complex organizations if we are to capture the
complex phenomenon of IC. It is not that the studies that have been carried out so
far are bad or useless, but that they are inadequate to capture the phenomenon of
ICs. The more we know about how ICs operate, the more we become aware of the
unknown unknows that could have a major impact on the subject that we study.
This is normal and it shows that our field of study is maturing.
However, we do have to recognize that we need to change our perceptions of
what ICs are. We have moved away from the, now trite, view that ICs are mere
dispute resolution mechanisms. Alter has already given a good starting point
into the way that we might want to classify the different ICs, depending on their
primary function within their respective systems." We should also continue
studying the interactions that ICs have with their outside.
However, we should, just like Slaughters?? insight regarding states, see ICs
as disaggregated entities with several departments, each with their own areas of
responsibility, interacting with different, but sometimes, overlapping actors who
themselves might be disaggregated. For example, while we have studied how ICs
interact with national parliaments or national courts, we should also be aware that
different departments of an international court have different types of contact with
these national entities. The judges might enter into a dialogue with national courts
or national parliaments through their written opinions, but court registrars come
3° Stuart Ford, Complexity and Efficiency at International Criminal Courts, Emory
International Law Review 29 (2014), 1-69, 1.
31 Karen ]. Alter, The New Terrain of International Law: Courts, Politics, Rights, Princeton,
NJ, Princeton University Press, 2014.
Anne-Marie Slaughter, A New World Order, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press,
2004.
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