World Court Digest

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III.	The International Court of Justice
2.	THE JURISDICTION OF THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE
2.1.	General Rules

¤ Arrest Warrant of 11 April 2000
(Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Belgium)
Judgment of 14 February 2002

[pp. 12-14] 26. The Court recalls that, according to its settled jurisprudence, its jurisdiction must be determined at the time that the act instituting proceedings was filed. Thus, if the Court has jurisdiction on the date the case is referred to it, it continues to do so regardless of subsequent events. Such events might lead to a finding that an application has subsequently become moot and to a decision not to proceed to judgment on the merits, but they cannot deprive the Court of jurisdiction (see Nottebohm, Preliminary Objection, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1953, p. 122; Right of Passage over Indian Territory, Preliminary Objections, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1957, p. 142; Questions of Interpretation and Application of the 1971 Montreal Convention arising from the Aerial Incident at Lockerbie (Libyan Arab Jamahiriya v. United Kingdom), Preliminary Objections, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1998, pp. 23-24, para. 38; and Questions of Interpretation and Application of the 1971 Montreal Convention arising from the Aerial Incident at Lockerbie (Libyan Arab Jamahiriya v. United States of America), Preliminary Objections, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1998, p. 129, para. 37).

27. Article 36, paragraph 2, of the Statute of the Court provides:

“The States parties to the present Statute may at any time declare that they recognize as compulsory ipso facto and without special agreement, in relation to any other State accepting the same obligation, the jurisdiction of the Court in all legal disputes concerning:

(a)	the interpretation of a treaty;
(b)	any question of international law;
(c)	the existence of any fact which, if established, would constitute a breach of an international obligation;
(d)	the nature or extent of the reparation to be made for the breach of an international obligation.”

On 17 October 2000, the date that the Congo’s Application instituting these proceedings was filed, each of the Parties was bound by a declaration of acceptance of compulsory jurisdiction, filed in accordance with the above provision: Belgium by a declaration of 17 June 1958 and the Congo by a declaration of 8 February 1989. Those declarations contained no reservation applicable to the present case.

Moreover, it is not contested by the Parties that at the material time there was a legal dispute between them concerning the international lawfulness of the arrest warrant of 11 April 2000 and the consequences to be drawn if the warrant was unlawful. Such a dispute was clearly a legal dispute within the meaning of the Court’s jurisprudence, namely “a disagreement on a point of law or fact, a conflict of legal views or of interests between two persons” in which “the claim of one party is positively opposed by the other” (Questions of Interpretation and Application of the 1971 Montreal Convention arising from the Aerial Incident at Lockerbie (Libyan Arab Jamahiriya v. United Kingdom), Preliminary Objections, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1998, p. 17, para. 22; and Questions of Interpretation and Application of the 1971 Montreal Convention arising from the Aerial Incident at Lockerbie (Libyan Arab Jamahiriya v. United States of America), Preliminary Objections, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1998, pp. 122-123, para. 21).

28. The Court accordingly concludes that at the time that it was seised of the case it had jurisdiction to deal with it, and that it still has such jurisdiction.

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