Article 60 of the ICJ Statute provides a mechanism for interpreting a previous binding judgment in the event of dispute as to the meaning or scope of that judgment. Procedural legal issues such as jurisdiction and admissibility in interpretative proceedings under Article 60 are different from those in regular contentious or advisory proceedings before the ICJ. The Court has developed a set of concrete rules in its jurisprudence under the simple wording of Article 60 to adjudicate on these procedural issues. However, a case-by-case examination of the Court’s jurisprudence reveals that there is still no structurally clear and logically sound framework, because the ICJ fails to conceptually divide the issues of ‘power,’ ‘jurisdiction,’ and ‘admissibility’ in interpretative proceedings. In order to rectify this problem, this article proposes an analytical framework for the ICJ with a clearer conceptualization of the Court’s ‘power,’ ‘jurisdiction,’ and ‘admissibility’ under Article 60 to clarify the meaning of its previous judgments in interpretative proceedings.

It is conceivable that the construction of a convention is in question in a case brought before ICJ and a State that is a party to the convention but not to the case has legal interests which may be affected by the construction given by the judgment in the case. As hinted at in the Whaling in the Antarctic case and the Sovereignty over Pulau Ligitan and Pulau Sipadan case, such a third State might intervene in the proceedings under Article 62 as well as Article 63 of the Statute unless it should be interpreted otherwise. In light of relevant provisions of the Statute and jurisprudence of the Court, this paper explores the question whether such a State has the choice, to submit an application to intervene under Article 62 or to make a declaration of intervention under Article 63.