Recent submission of Israel-Palestine conflict and climate-change related questions to the International Court of Justice(ICJ)by the United Nations General Assembly attests to the tension between law and politics as well as the in-tention of some States and other international actors to use legal proceedings to break the political impasse.This article revisits the history of defining and distinguishing legal questions from political questions in the ICJ advisory opinion proceedings and ar-gues that the distinction is rooted in the Court's judicial tradition since the establishment of the Permanent Court of Interna-tional Justice.However,after empirically examining the practice of the ICJ,it is found that the ICJ has diminished the jurisdic-tional limitations based on the distinction between legal and political questions in establishing its advisory jurisdiction.On the other hand,in crafting the advisory opinion,the ICJ responded to political demands of different interest groups by abstractiza-tion of the opinion,re-definition of the advisory questions so as to adjust the scope of the opinion,and declaration of non liquet.These observations provide States with meaningful strategies of participating in the advisory proceedings.
Advisory OpinionInternational Court of JusticeLegal QuestionsPolitical QuestionsJurisdiction
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