Courts

Where Do International Judges Go To School?

The diversity of educational training at the international level appears robust. 

By Taylor Dalton  
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Ed. note: This article first appeared on The Juris Lab, a forum where “data analytics meets the law.”

In the U.S., most federal judges have studied at a small, elite group of law schools.  As Iuliano and Stewart (2016) explain, 48% of federal judges who attended law school came from only 20 different law schools — with Harvard being the most represented law school at every level of the federal judiciary.   Eight of the nine current Supreme Court Justices studied law at two schools: Harvard and Yale.  The Harvard-Yalification of the Supreme Court is the subject of debate about the value of diversity, as well as elitism, in the federal judiciary.  

Where are international judges educated?  Some legal scholars, Iuliano and Stewart, supra, included, distinguish between “surface-level” and  “deep-level” diversity on courts.  Deep-level diversity is, broadly speaking, diversity in attributes that are not readily observable but still crucially important.  Education is one such attribute that may have a significant impact on group decision-making, innovation, and consideration of diverse perspectives.

At the international level, research on the diversity of judges on international adjudicative bodies is limited.  However, as Terris, Romano, and Swigart (2007) explain, international judges generally have diverse backgrounds owing to the wide geographic scope and differing legal systems relevant to international courts’ purview.  As it pertains to educational background, international judges have more educational diversity than some U.S. federal courts, although some elite institutions like Harvard, Yale, the University of Paris, Cambridge, and the University of London and the like are often represented. 

From the work of Swigart and Terris (2013), we know that as of 2012, international judges typically obtain multiple degrees in law and generally obtain their first degree in their home country.  Two thirds study abroad, often in Europe, the United Kingdom, or the U.S., earning an LLM.  However, do these trends hold almost a decade later?   

We can look to the judges on six of the most active international courts to find an answer.  Those courts are: the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International Criminal Court (ICC), the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), European Court of Justice (ECJ), European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), and Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).  These are by no means all of the courts active today, but they are some of the largest, most active, and oldest international courts.  Currently, 150 judges serve on these six courts.

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On average, judges obtained over two degrees, most obtaining three degrees, and from one degree up to seven degrees.  As Swigart and Terris (2013) found over nine years ago, two-thirds of international judges studied abroad at some point in their education.  Of these judges, 19% studied in the United Kingdom, 16% studied in the U.S. and 16% studied in France.

 

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To start, 81% of judges obtained their first degree in their home country.  Thus, 19% obtained their first degree abroad.  For those studying abroad for their first degree, most study in France, followed by the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Italy, and South Korea.  In total, institutions in the United Kingdom, the U.S., France, Italy, and Belgium have awarded the most degrees to the currently serving international judges.  Those five countries (out of 71 different countries) have awarded 36% of all the degrees obtained by the judges.  The U.S., the United Kingdom, and France are the most popular destinations for obtaining additional degrees.

 

Of the advanced degrees obtained by the judges, LLM is the most popular degree with 92 judges obtaining one, followed by 51 judges obtaining PhDs, 10 MAs, and 7 JSD or SJD.  The ECJ has the highest percentage of LLMs, with 72% of the judges having one.  Over half of the judges at all the other courts, except the IACHR, have LLMs. When it comes to PhDs, more than half of the judges on the IACHR and ITLOS have obtained one.

Of the judges considered, 41 or 27% of the judges are women.  In obtaining LLMs, women have obtained them at a higher rate where 68% of the women have LLMs as compared with 59% of the men.  Men and women appear to obtain PhDs at the same rate of 34%.

[Note: Only schools with at least four degrees are included in the graph.]

The current judges obtained degrees from 214 different institutions.  Charles University and Harvard University have awarded the most degrees, followed closely by the University of Cambridge.  The degrees of the international judges come from a much wider distribution of institutions than in the U.S., as discussed above.  However, Harvard — once again — claims a top spot in awarding degrees to international judges. Yet, the diversity of educational training at the international level appears robust.  Judges on international courts should be bringing a wide variety of views on the law and legal systems to bear on the matters that come before them.

Jamie Schlegel provided excellent research assistance in collecting the data used in this post.

Read more at The Juris Lab … 

Taylor Dalton is a PhD candidate in USC’s Political Science and International Relations (POIR) program. His research focuses broadly on international law, foreign relations law, international courts and tribunals, the laws of war, arms control, and global governance of cybersecurity threats.  Before his doctoral studies, Taylor was a civil litigator practicing in Orange County, California. He graduated from Cornell Law School with both a JD and LLM in International and Comparative Law. While at Cornell, he studied international law in Suzhou, China at Soochow University and the United Kingdom at the University College London. Before law school, Taylor was a copy editor for a newswire service. He graduated from USC with a BA in Philosophy and Political Science.

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