Judicial activism and restraint in the creation of the International Judicial Function: How have activism and restraint shaped the international courts ?

The thesis attempts to bring coherence to the manner in which international courts and tribunals interpret international law, how they reason out their decisions, and the subsequent effect that this has had upon the institutions themselves. On the one hand, for most of its existence, international law has largely been examined without its judicial component with limited legal scholarship analysing the emergence of the role of the international judge. On the other hand, many courts have been accused of either overstepping or sometimes underplaying the boundaries and powers granted to them by their creators (the States) while carrying out their interpretation of international law. The thesis bridges these two components, as it examines how the judicial institutions on the international arena have gradually shaped themselves through their unexpected, and sometimes eccentric, judicial reasoning, that has resulted in novel approaches to international law as well as the creation of an independent function of the international judge.