Traditional ideas about the private nature of the international legal order are increasingly being forced to contend with the development of public legal elements at the international level. The notion of the international community interest is key to understanding these developments and, as such, has transformed our understanding of international law. There are many different approaches to the public/private distinction in law, broadly categorised into relational, public authority, and interest-based approaches. These can be reduced to four key elements of publicness: the existence of a community or public; the universality of the public regime in question with its own boundaries; normative and institutional hierarchies; the objectivity of obligation and responsibility. The development of the community interest and related norms of international law can be seen to have introduced and strengthened all of these elements of publicness within the international legal system. It is thus on its way to becoming an international public legal order. This has important implications for our understanding of international law and the future development of the international legal order.

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There is an essential conflict at the heart of the international judicial function. On the one hand, interstate courts and tribunals (ict s) are viewed as guardians of international legality; organs of the international community itself. On the other, they are the tools of their creator states. Accordingly, traditional conceptions of the international judicial function frame ict s as dispute settlors pure and simple, a perspective which comes into conflict with a more community-oriented role for ict s. This article explores these different approaches to the international judicial function, presenting them as two opposing perspectives: one bilateralist, one based on the community interest in legality and the international rule of law. It then assesses the practice and procedure of the icj, itlos, and the wto dsm in relation to jurisdiction and admissibility against these differing views of the international judicial function. It concludes that, although the bilateralist perspective still holds considerable sway, a more systemic, community interest-oriented international judicial function is clearly emerging in the field of international adjudication.