Whether justified in terms of domestic statute, international treaty or customary international law, the positivist account of universal jurisdiction rests on rickety and potentially ruinous foundations. Common recourse to its ancient underpinnings in the crime of piracy demonstrates that, at best, the foundations of universal jurisdiction are in need of modernization. The following article discusses four schools of thought about the legitimate aims and interested communities that universal jurisdiction is intended to serve. The discussion could be seen as tracing the evolution of the principle of universal jurisdiction, from its traditional basis in state sovereignty (serving domestic interests) to inter-state comity (serving the interests of the community of states) to the idea of the conscience of humanity (serving the interests of the international community as a whole), before proposing the idea of universal jurisdiction as a human right of access to justice (serving the interests of victims). The discussion takes place against the backdrop of a survey of completed universal jurisdiction trials that have taken place since the Eichmann trial in 1961. The aim is to understand the source of a domestic court's legitimate authority to exercise universal jurisdiction and thereby reposition discussion of universal jurisdiction, a step away from traditional grand narratives to a position more in line with contemporary theory and practice.

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Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0922156513000253How to cite this article: DEVIKA HOVELL (2013). A Dialogue Model: The AbstractThis article proposes a different theoretical account of the role of domestic courts when engaged in judicial review of decision-making by international institutions. Many domestic courts in democratic societies operate in accordance with a 'public-law model' when adjudicating questions related to international decision-making, underwritten by respect for doctrines such as the rule of law and separation of powers. Drawing on a case study of domestic-court decisions in the Security Council sanctions context, this article seeks to demonstrate how the public law model's focus on concepts of 'bindingness' and hierarchy between judicial and political organs can lead to distorted outcomes when applied to decision-making by international institutions. As an alternative, the author proposes a different theoretical account of the judicial role, described as the 'dialogue model', of courts when engaging in the review of Security Council decision-making. The idea is that domestic courts should confine themselves to tools of 'interpretation' and 'declaration' in their approach to international decision-making, so as to position their judgments in a more theoretically supportable way in the broader legal context.