International law and international relations have experienced the phenomenon on the judicialization of international relations and the subsequent proliferation of international courts and tribunals. One of the most significant aspects of this phenomenon, is the diversity in the institutional settings of each of the international courts and tribunals. These differences in the mandate, jurisdictional and institutional design make each of these judicial institutions unique. Despite these differences, there is one aspect that is common to nearly all the existing international courts and tribunals: the right for judges and arbitrators to append dissenting opinions.
Differences exists, however, as to how this right is regulated, designed and exercised across international courts and tribunals. While at some courts and tribunals dissenting opinions should be anonymous, at others their content should be strictly limited to the aspects addressed in the majority judgment. Likewise, judges do not always exercise their right to append dissenting opinions for the same reasons.
Based on these differences, this dissertation sets out to investigate whether there are differences in the exercise of the right to append dissenting opinions that can be traced back to differences in the mandate, jurisdictional and institutional design of the international court or tribunal in which they were rendered.
This research aim is made through a focus on two courts that are notable for their differences, namely, the International Court of Justice and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.