Why do states voluntarily commit to international adjudicatory mechanisms and actually submit their disputes to them, given their traditional misgivings about the figure of the international judge?
This project aims to study the reasons explaining the jurisdictional commitments of States and their recourse to international courts and tribunals. States are often said to be reluctant to consent to the jurisdiction of international courts and tribunals and let the latter adjudicate their disputes, for instance because of a lack of predictability of court decisions and structural ambiguities of the applicable rules. These reasons, however, are particular manifestations of a more general phenomenon: the desire of all governments to keep control over the decisions that affect them.
Yet states do make judicial commitments and voluntarily submit disputes in which they are involved to international courts and tribunals. What are the reasons that bring states to abandon decision control?