Lawmaking Through Advisory Opinions?

Abstract

International courts and tribunals are firstly and particularly conceived to settle legal disputes between States and/or other organs or individuals admitted as parties according to the statute of the respective court by means of a binding decision. An advisory function is not inherent in the function of a judicial body, but has to be transferred expressly upon a court or tribunal in the constituent instrument. For non-standing judicial bodies, i.e., arbitral tribunals, an advisory function is rather unusual, but not altogether ruled out: The parties to a compromis may empower the tribunal to give an advisory opinion.

Social Media and Ethical Limitations to Malaysian Judiciary

“…The registrar functions to circulate and publish such a collection of updated guidance to its members related to their future social networking activities. The advisory opinion is not a formal source of law but it has persuasive authority to present arguments towards particular conduct in question in observance of customary law (Oellers-Frahm, 2011). In this sense, the judicial ethics committee discusses, clarifies, and determines the complexities associated with the content of acceptable conduct and violation of judicial duties in the context of social media use with its reasoning (Teressa & Jelka, 2016) One cannot doubt the possibility of discouraging judicial members from signing up their social media accounts or using pseudonyms in order to avoid problems.…”