Vision/Mission

Vision:  iCourts strives to be the global hub for research on international courts and their impact on law, politics and society.

Mission:  iCourts provides research results at the highest international level applying an inquisitive, problem-driven, empirical, and interdisciplinary approach.

iCourts is committed to building knowledge about and insight into the role and function of international courts in a changing global society. iCourts’ research is problem-driven, focusing on salient theoretical and practical issues of importance not only for an effective international judiciary, but also for the development of democratic politics under the weight of contemporary globalisation.  Above all, our goal is to provide scientific input into the understanding of international courts’ origins, their performance, and their impact in the legal, political and social arena.

Photo: African court on Human and Peoples' Rights

We further see the Centre as the training ground for a next generation of lawyers and social scientists specialised in international courts. We have developed a specially tailored iCourts Summer School which provides early stage PhD students with the key tools for understanding the phenomenon of international courts from an interdisciplinary perspective. At the bachelor and the master educational level, iCourts has developed an iCourts Excellence Programme (iEP), which introduces key methods and approaches to the understanding of international law and courts and their role in the contemporary world. The iEP helps law students to develop skills useful for a whole range of national and international careers and activities.

We welcome visitors and will seek to have a continuous presence of visiting scholars and doctoral students at the centre. Read more under Visiting Programme.