The “Inversed Declarations” of Acceptance of the Compulsory Jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice

Abstract Among the 74 existing Declarations of acceptance of the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, three have the characteristics of “inversed declarations”. They are the Declarations of Egypt (1957), Equatorial Guinea (2017), and Iran (2023). Far from determining a general acceptance of the Court’s jurisdiction (possibly subject to reservations), these three Declarations entail the recognition of the jurisdiction of the Court only in relation to specific subject matters, which are explicitly mentioned in the Declarations. The article constitutes the first analytical study of the problems posed by this kind of declarations. It considers their legal nature, the problem of their validity, and the impact that their use can have on the function of the optional clause. Finally, it outlines some possible remedies, at the disposal of States and the Court, to neutralise the abuses deriving from the practice of filing inversed declarations.