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60 U.S.F. L. Rev. 1 (2025)

handle is hein.journals/usflr60 and id is 1 raw text is: The Political Question Doctrine and the International Court of Justice By HALIL RAHMAN BASARAN* Introduction ONE VERSION OF THE POLITICAL QUESTION DOCTRINE maintains that there are some issues that are not amenable to international judicial dispute settlement and are inherently foreign to judicial dispute resolution.' This is known as substantive non-justiciability. Another version of the political question doctrine protects international political decisions from international courts, in that the latter shall not intervene in politi- cal questions.2 Such non-intervention protects the stature of interna- tional courts-this is known as political non-justiciability. The operations of the International Court ofJustice (ICJ), the World Court of gen- eral international law, epitomize the latter version.3 In this respect, the case of Marshall Islands v. United Kingdom, examined in Part V of this Article, serves as the ultimate illustration.4 This Article argues two points. First, the political question doctrine is rather a matter of political expediency, with political non-justiciability being the preponderant principle. The political question doctrine is not based upon legal reasoning. The political question doctrine thus represents the ICJ's political reaction to the current international * Professor of International Law, Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University, Istanbul, Turkey. ORCID: 0000-0002-0728-1381. 1. Curtis A. Bradley, The Political Question Doctrine and International Law, 91 GEo. WASH. L. REv. 1556, 1556-57 (2023). 2. Jed Odermatt & Bilyana Petkova, A Political Question Doctrine at the International Court ofJustice?, EJIL: TALK! (Feb. 26, 2024), https://www.ejiltalk.org/a-political-question- doctrine-at-the-international-court-of-justice/ [https://perma.cc/52M2-6JD6] (According to the broader, 'functional' view of the doctrine, courts should abstain from deciding on a question that is likely to be better decided by the executive or legislative branch or that the courts abstain from deciding when they lack sufficient expertise and information to make a reasoned legaljudgment.). 3. E.g., Obligations Concerning Negotiations Relating to Cessation of Nuclear Arms Race and to Nuclear Disarmament (Marsh. Is. v. U.K.), Preliminary Objections, 2016 I.C.J. 833 (Oct. 5). 4. Id. 1