The first and second lists are of all the permanent judges of the International Court of Justice, the main judicial organ of the United Nations, first chronologically and then by seat. The third list is a list of judges appointed ad hoc by a party to a proceeding before the Court pursuant to Article 31 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice.
Contents
Succession of seats
The Court comprises 15 seats. When the original fifteen judges were elected in 1946, they drew lots to determine which five would have 3-year initial terms, which five would have 6-year initial terms, and which five would have 9-year initial terms. From then onwards, all terms have been nine years, with five seats being up for election every three years. The seats are numbered according to the length of the initial term and then in order of seniority of the first judge to hold the seat.
There are no formal rules for the allocation of seats, other than that no two may be nationals of the same state. In practice, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council have each had a permanent seat on the Court, except between 1967 and 1985 when there was no Chinese judge. The remaining seats have been informally allocated by regional groups in the same way as the fifteen seats on the Security Council. Since 1970, the conventional allocation is three seats to Asia Pacific, three seats to Africa, two seats to Latin America and the Caribbean, two seats to Eastern Europe and five seats to Western Europe and Others.
Judges sitting ad hoc
All Judges ad hoc: http://www.icj-cij.org/court/index.php?p1=1&p2=5&p3=2&lang=en