Sociology of International Adjudication

Abstract

This article presents the ways in which classical sociological theories can help unpack how international courts operate and how their adjudicative practices are in part steered by social and political structures. The main focus is on classic sociological theories, respectively Weberian interpetivist, Durkheimian functionalist, and Marxist and post-Marxist critical perspectives. In order to demonstrate how these sociological perspectives are relevant for the study of international adjudication, the article applies their tenets to a different set of international courts, including the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the Inter-American Court of Human rights (IACtHR), the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), the Central American Court of Justice (CACJ), the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the East African Court of Justice (EACJ).

Keywords: International courts, sociological theory, sociology of law, European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human rights, the Caribbean Court of Justice, the Central American Court of Justice, the Court of Justice of the European Union, the East African Court of Justice