| III. | The International Court of Justice |
| 3. | THE PROCEDURE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE |
| 3.11. | Intervention |
| 3.11.4. | Procedural Rights of the Intervening State |
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Land, Island and Maritime Frontier Dispute
(El Salvador/Honduras: Nicaragua intervening),
Judgment of 11 September 1992,
I.C.J. Reports 1992, p. 351
[pp. 581-582] 371. The Chamber must emphasize that States engaged in
proceedings before the Court or a Chamber are under a duty to conform with all
decisions as to procedure, which the Court is specifically empowered to make by
Articles 30 and 48 of its Statute. At the same time, in the present case, in
which questions of the legal status of waters within the Gulf have been
presented by the Parties as closely bound up with the status of the waters
outside the Gulf (and, in the presentation of Honduras, with questions of
delimitation), the Chamber considers that no useful purpose would be served by
endeavouring to single out in the present Judgment which of the contentions of
Nicaragua were squarely within the limits of its permitted intervention, and
which might be said to have gone beyond those limits. The Chamber has taken
account of the arguments of Nicaragua only where they appeared to it to be
relevant in its consideration of the legal régime of the waters of the
Gulf of Fonseca. The same approach has been adopted in relation to the "formal
conclusions" presented by Nicaragua at the afternoon hearing of 13 June
1991, and set out in paragraph 26 of this Judgment. Since Nicaragua has not, by
being admitted to intervene, become a party to the case, the Chamber does not
see in those conclusions any definition of the petita reflecting the
Chamber's mission. These "conclusions" were presented by the
Nicaraguan Agent as being "to aid the Chamber", and it is on that
basis that the Chamber has taken note of them, to the extent that they relate to
the permitted object of the intervention.
