International Court of Justice Judges

International Court of Justice Judges gathers the sitting and former judges of the International Court of Justice, the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, seated at the Peace Palace in The Hague and tasked with settling legal disputes between states and giving advisory opinions on questions referred by United Nations organs and specialized agencies. The court traces its institutional lineage to the Permanent Court of International Justice, grouped separately in this subcategory, and its fifteen judges are elected by the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council to nine year terms. Because the court has sat continuously since 1946 and its bench has always reflected the world's major regions and legal systems, this group is broken into a second level below it by the same regional grouping the United Nations itself uses in practice to elect the court's own membership: Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Western Europe and Other States.