section_path: Composition
section_name: Composition
paragraph_text: Composition
  
  The ICJ is composed of fifteen judges elected to nine-year terms by the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council from a list of people nominated by the national groups in the Permanent Court of Arbitration. The election process is set out in Articles 4–19 of the ICJ Statute. Elections are staggered, with five judges elected every three years to ensure continuity within the court. Should a judge die in office, the practice has generally been to elect a judge in a special election to complete the term. Historically, deceased judges have been replaced by judges from the same region, though not —as often wrongly asserted— necessarily from the same nationality.
  
  Article 3 states that no two judges may be nationals of the same country. According to Article 9, the membership of the court is supposed to represent the "main forms of civilization and of the principal legal systems of the world". This has been interpreted to include common law, civil law, socialist law, and Islamic law, while the precise meaning of "main forms of civilization" is contested.
  
  There is an informal understanding that the seats will be distributed by geographic regions so that there are five seats for Western countries, three for African states (including one judge of Francophone civil law, one of Anglophone common law and one Arab), two for Eastern European states, three for Asian states and two for Latin American and Caribbean states. For most of the court's history, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (France, USSR, China, the United Kingdom, and the United States) have always had a judge serving, thereby occupying three of the Western seats, one of the Asian seats and one of the Eastern European seats. Exceptions have been China not having a judge on the court from 1967 to 1985, during which time it did not put forward a candidate, and British judge Sir Christopher Greenwood being withdrawn as a candidate for election for a second nine-year term on the bench in 2017, leaving no judges from the United Kingdom on the court. Greenwood had been supported by the UN Security Council but failed to get a majority in the UN General Assembly. Indian judge Dalveer Bhandari took the seat instead.
  
  Article 6 of the Statute provides that all judges should be "elected regardless of their nationality among persons of high moral character" who are either qualified for the highest judicial office in their home states or known as lawyers with sufficient competence in international law. Judicial independence is dealt with specifically in Articles 16–18.
  
  To insure impartiality, Article 16 of the Charter requires independence from their national governments or other interested parties, stating, "No member of the Court may exercise any political or administrative function, or engage in any other occupation of a professional nature." In addition, Article 17 requires that judges do not show any prior biases on cases before them, specifically, "No member may participate in the decision of any case in which he has previously taken part as agent, counsel, or advocate for one of the parties, or as a member of a national or international court, or of a commission of enquiry, or in any other capacity."
  
  Judges of the International Court of Justice are entitled to the style of His/Her Excellency. Judges are not able to hold any other post or act as counsel. In practice, members of the court have their own interpretation of these rules and many have chosen to remain involved in outside arbitration and hold professional posts as long as there is no conflict of interest. Former judge Bruno Simma and current judge Georg Nolte have acknowledged that moonlighting should be restricted.
  
  A judge can be dismissed only by a unanimous vote of the other members of the court. Despite these provisions, the independence of ICJ judges has been questioned. For example, during the Nicaragua case, the United States issued a communiqué suggesting that it could not present sensitive material to the court because of the presence of judges from the Soviet bloc.
  
  Judges may deliver joint judgments or give their own separate opinions. Decisions and advisory opinions are by majority, and, in the event of an equal division, the president's vote becomes decisive, which occurred in the Legality of the Use by a State of Nuclear Weapons in Armed Conflict (Opinion requested by WHO), ICJ Reports 66. Judges may also deliver separate dissenting opinions.
  
  In its 77 years of history, only five women have been elected to the Court, with former UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston calling for states to take seriously questions of representation in the bench.
  
  In 2023, judges elected to take office from 2024 did not include a Russian member, so for the first time, from 2024 there will be no member from the Commonwealth of Independent States. This is also the first time that Russia would not have a judge on the ICJ, even going back to its predecessor, the Soviet Union.