Nationality
Japan
Year of election
2015
Year of titular member
2021
Commissions

Function(s)

  • Judge, International Court of Justice
  • Vice-Chair, International Law Association

Area(s) of Expertise

  • Relationship between International Law and National Law
  • International Human Rights Law
  • International Economic Law
  • International Dispute Resolution
  • Jurisdictional Immunities

 

Biography

Judge Yuji Iwasawa is a judge of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) since 22 June 2018.

Prior to his election to the ICJ, he was a professor of international law at the Faculty of Law in the University of Tokyo in Japan. Before that, he was a professor in the Department of International Relations in the University of Tokyo and an associate professor at the Faculty of Law in Osaka City University.

Judge Iwasawa is currently also a Vice-Chair of the International Law Association, a member of the Science Council of Japan.

He was formerly a member of the Human Rights Committee under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (2007-2018) and served as its Chairperson twice (2009-2011, 2017-2018). He was formerly also a judge (2004-13) and the Vice-President (2010-13) of the Asian Development Bank Administrative Tribunal, a member of the Permanent Group of Experts under the WTO Agreement on Subsidies (2003-08), a member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (2002-04), President of the Japanese Society of International Law (2016-18), a Visiting Fellow of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law (Cambridge) (1991-93, 1997, 2000-01), Overseas Fellow at the Churchill College, Cambridge (2000-2001), un chercheur invité au Centre de recherche sur les droits de l’homme et le droit humanitaire a l’Université Panthéon Assas (Paris) (2015-16), and a lecturer of The Hague Academy of International Law (2002).

Judge Iwasawa has an LL.B. from the University of Tokyo; an LL.M. from Harvard Law School; an S.J.D. from the University of Virginia, and an Honorary Doctorate from Osaka City University.

Selected publications

Selected Books:

  • Domestic Applicability of Treaties: What are “Self-executing” Treaties? (Tokyo: Yuhikaku, 1985) (Japanese)
  • The Problem in International Transactions with Foreign States and State Enterprises: Jurisdictional Immunity of States (Tokyo: National Institute for Research and Advancement, 1987) (Japanese)
  • Dispute Settlement in the WTO (Tokyo: Sanseido, 1995) (Japanese)
  • International Law, Human Rights, and Japanese Law: The Impact of International Law on Japanese Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998)
  • International Law (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 2020) (Japanese)

Selected Articles:

  • “The Doctrine of Self-Executing Treaties in the United States: A Critical Analysis,” 26 Va. J. Int’l L. 627 (1986)
  • “The Relationship between International Law and National Law: Japanese Experiences,” 64 Brit. Y.B. Int’l L. 333 (1993)
  • “Third Parties before International Tribunals: The ICJ and the WTO,” in Liber Amicorum    Judge Shigeru Oda 871 (2002)
  • “WTO Dispute Settlement as Judicial Supervision,” 5 J. Int’l Econ. L. 287 (2002)
  • “Domestic Application of International Law,” 378 Recueil des cours de de l’Academie de droit international de la Haye 9 (2015)
Register to the newsletter