Comparative Costs and Financing of Permanent Dispute Settlement Mechanisms

Abstract

Different dispute settlement bodies have different budgets. These depend on a number of factors, including the functions of the dispute settlement body in question (eg the costs of international criminal courts include the costs of the work of the office of the prosecutor); the number of judges and the manner of their remuneration (eg while judges at the International Court of Justice receive a fixed annual salary, judges at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) receive an annual allowance and for the remainder of their recompense are remunerated according to the time they serve on the Tribunal); the body’s membership and capacity to fund; and the extent to which the dispute settlement body relies on voluntary contributions.

For the purposes of this Academic Forum concept paper, the authors have elected to address the comparative costs and financing of the following permanent dispute settlement mechanisms: the ICJ; ITLOS; the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) of the World Trade Organization (WTO); the International Criminal Court (ICC); the three regional human rights courts, that is the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights; and the Iran-US Claims Tribunal (IUSCT). For each dispute settlement body, the paper addresses, first, the costs involved in its functioning and what is covered by the funding and, second, who finances the body. Instead of a conclusion, the paper presents a summary table of costs and financing of a selection of the above permanent dispute settlement bodies. In the interests of comparison, the table adds the costs and financing of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).

Keywords: costs, ISDS, permanent dispute settlement mechanisms, international courts, arbitration, ICJ, ITLOS, WTO DSB, ICC, ICSID

JEL Classification: K33, F02, F02, F13, F21, H77, E22, K41, K49, K40, K39, K30, K20, K29, K10, K19