Understanding the Behaviour of International Courts : An Examination of Decision-Making at the Ad Hoc International Criminal Tribunals

This article seeks to contribute to the literature on the behaviour of international courts (ICs) by focusing on the internal dynamics of decision-making processes within them and by drawing on both strategic and attitudinal models of judicial behaviour developed for domestic courts. The main contention advanced is that the ideas and interests of judges in ICs account for variations in their decision-making. In order to test competing models for understanding the behaviour of ICs, this article includes the first study to examine the decision-making of the ICTR Trial Chambers and of the ICTY and ICTR Appeals Chamber using quantitative methods. The similarities and differences between these ICs have created a rich empirical environment rife with natural experiments. A comparison of decision-making in the ICTY and ICTR Appeals Chambers suggests that the same judges in these two ICs evince stable patterns of judicial behaviour reflecting their attitudinal commitments regarding international law and their conception of the judicial role. A comparison of decision-making between the ICTY and ICTR suggests that judges within these two ICs evince divergent patterns of judicial behaviour in terms of sentencing practices, reflecting dissimilarities in their environments. These results tend to show that both ideas and interests can account for variations in the decision-making of ICs and that while external interests influence judicial decisions, they do so because they have a basis in the ideas and interests of judges