The impact that scientific or technical issues may have on a dispute before an international court or tribunal varies considerably according to the circumstances. Let us suppose that a dispute between two States turns on whether one of them has produced more than an allowed quantity of enriched uranium. An international court or tribunal to...

1. Introduction Science enters inter-State arbitration in various ways in environmental disputes, which are notoriously closely tied to complex scientific facts. The epistemic authority of scientific knowledge may induce two main types of reactions from international adjudicators hearing such disputes. Panels may either acknowledge the cognitive authority of scientific knowledge, which may invite affording deference...

1. Introduction International courts’ and tribunals’ interaction with science has been the focus of a growing body of scholarship from diverse perspectives in recent years.[1] As Katalin Sulyok has observed, dispute settlement in the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been regarded as the most ‘science intensive’ practice in the international arena, relying, when needed, on...

1. Introduction The International Court of Justice (ICJ)’s 2022 Silala judgment is surely one of the most curious that the Court has ever handed down.[1] The judgment represents perhaps the first time ever that the Court has decided that the claims of one of the parties, in this case Bolivia, had changed so much over...