• DOI:10.1163/9789004380981
• Corpus ID: 158660949

The Right of Actio Popularis before International Courts and Tribunals

@inproceedings{Ahmadov2018TheRO,
  title={The Right of Actio Popularis before International Courts and Tribunals},
  author={Farid Ahmadov},
  year={2018}
}

• F. Ahmadov
• Published 13 August 2018
• Law

The concept of actio popularis defined as a right to take action in vindication of public interests has been utilized in a variety of contexts. The academic literature uses the concept to refer e.g. to a right to bring claims before courts, third party countermeasures or exercise of universal jurisdiction. However, the thesis examines actio popularis solely as a judicial concept, i.e. the right of action to protect collective interests before international courts and tribunals. The central argument in the thesis is that except cases where the right of actio popularis is expressly vested in the claimants by virtue of treaty provisions such a right may be inferred from the primary norms (substantive norms) which are established to protect collective interests. In the context of claims before international courts and tribunals such inference is possible by permissive interpretation of secondary norms (procedural rules/the rules of standing) subject to judicial policy concerns which will vary from one international court to another. Hence the relationship between collective norms and permissive interpretation of standing rules is not invariably symmetrical. The differences in judicial policy concerns have led some tribunals to impose self-restraint and refuse to permissively interpret the standing rules by deferring the matter to decision by States and in effect dismiss actio popularis. Other tribunals acted more actively and interpreted the rules of standing so permissively as to allow for actio popularis. The latter has been a fairly recent development informed by the gradual recognition by the international community of the concept of collective obligations and willingness of some international tribunals to adjust the procedural norms to the collective nature of substantive norms. This development has had the effect of relativisation of procedural normativity in line with relativization of substantive normativity.