Distribution

For my contribution to this collection I have been tasked, first, with examining whether international courts and tribunals ‘challenge or reinforce the distribution of international justice' and, second, with exploring the extent to which international courts and tribunals have achieved ‘the desired transition “from power-based to law-based” international relations'. Both tasks require some thought as to whether there has been a shift in the monopoly held by states, indeed powerful states, on access to international justice. There is no methodologically sound way to pursue this inquiry in a thorough manner within the confines of this chapter. The volume of international courts and tribunals, their distinctiveness, their coverage and their significant outputs is but one obstacle. More important from my perspective, however, is the conceptual opacity of the parameters of my inquiry: ‘international justice', the ‘distribution of justice' and the ‘international rule of law' are all contestable or, at least, complex terms; the Western epistemological leanings of these terms and their hypostasis in the international legal discourse require analysis. The basic aim of my chapter, therefore, is to query both some of the assumptions commonly made and the ambitions sometimes expressed about the potential of international courts and tribunals to bring about change in terms of international justice and to bring power under judicial control