Global Justice and the Resources of International Courts

Administering global justice and international adjudication is no cheap business. Indeed, international courts are among some of the most expensive organs for international organizations to maintain. At the same time as international relation scholars and legal academics have improved our knowledge about the functioning, effects and politics of international courts, certain dynamics of administering global justice and international adjudication remain largely absent from scholarly attention. One important gap in the literature on international courts concerns the resourcing of international courts. How are international courts funded? Who controls their budgets? How does resourcing affect court behavior? When are judicial decisions likely to affect their resources? These are some of the questions which have so far escaped in-depth research. This paper contributes to the literature on international courts by filling this gap, focusing on the relationship between the resourcing of international courts and judicial independence. Existing literature suggests the autonomy of international organizations can be influenced by budgeting processes. Similarly, some research on comparative and international courts suggests judicial independence may be impacted by budgeting. This paper asks: if, how and under what conditions international courts are constrained by how they are resourced? The paper will argue that the control of resources is an institutional design feature of international courts which can have an impact on judicial independence, and thus judicial behavior. The paper will theorize the ways in which resourcing can affect judicial independence, and its observable implications in judicial behavior. Empirically, the paper will comparatively map the formal design of international courts on the dimension of resource control. Based on the mapping, the paper will then use a comparative case study analysis of two international courts – the East African Court of Justice and the Caribbean Court of Justice – to examine how the theoretical expectations bear out empirically and illustrate how resources of international courts affects how international courts administer justice.