AGLC4 Rule 10.2.8: Reported Decisions: Identifying Judges

When citing the judgment of the court, name no judge. When citing a separate or dissenting opinion or a declaration, the judge's name may follow the pinpoint in brackets if it is not otherwise clear, with the title written in full. Never add a label identifying the type of opinion; if that matters, say so in the text or the footnote.

AGLC4 page 165

Formatting

  • No judge is named for the court's own judgment, and (The Court) is not written.
  • For an opinion or declaration, the judge's name follows the pinpoint in round brackets after a single space.
  • Names follow rule 2.4.1, except that Judge, Judges, President and Vice-President are written out in full before the surname.
  • Several judges take the plural Judges, with commas between surnames and and before the last.
  • No label such as Separate Opinion, Dissenting Opinion or Declaration is added, whether in full or abbreviated.

Examples

Quoted from the Guide, page 165
  1. 23
    Interhandel (Switzerland v United States of America) (Preliminary Objections) [1959] ICJ Rep 6, 78 (President Klaestad).
  2. 24
    Elettronica Sicula SpA (ELSI) (United States of America v Italy) (Judgment) [1989] ICJ Rep 15, 98 (Judge Schwebel). [Not: … Dissenting Opinion of Judge Schwebel). Nor … (Dis Op Judge Schwebel). Nor … (DO Judge Schwebel).]
  3. 25
    Avena and Other Mexican Nationals (Mexico v United States of America) (Judgment) [2004] ICJ Rep 12, 79 (Judge Vereshchetin).
  4. 26
    Arrest Warrant of 11 April 2000 (Democratic Republic of the Congo v Belgium) (Judgment) [2002] ICJ Rep 3, 63–4 [2]–[3] (Judges Higgins, Kooijmans and Buergenthal).

Not

Quoted from the Guide, page 165
  • [Not: … Dissenting Opinion of Judge Schwebel). Nor … (Dis Op Judge Schwebel). Nor … (DO Judge Schwebel).]
    the kind of opinion is never labelled, in full or abbreviated

Forms in the rule

Quoted from the Guide, page 165
  • ‘(The Court)’
  • ‘Judge(s)’
  • ‘President’
  • ‘Vice-President’
  • ‘Separate Opinion’
  • ‘Dissenting Opinion’
  • ‘Declaration’

See also

Check your footnotes against these rules

Paste your paper into the free AGLC4 checker and each footnote is graded against the Guide, with the rule it breaks. To write a citation from scratch, use the AGLC4 citation generator.

AGLC4 citation checker AGLC4 citation generator

Formats, examples, passages, tables and the forms marked Not are quoted from the Australian Guide to Legal Citation (4th ed, Melbourne University Law Review Association, 2018), with the page of the Guide they appear on. Titles, summaries and explanations are our own.