ABSTRACT
International adjudication is a judicial procedure for resolving disputes between states by referring them to a standing court for a binding decision. Although conflict among humans is ubiquitous, a compelling body of anthropological evidence indicates that various societies have avoided outright warfare. The International Court of Justice played a role in helping resolve 35 percent of the cases in the population under investigation. To begin with, commercial intercourse creates a material incentive to resolve disputes peacefully: war reduces profits by interrupting vital economic exchanges. To ascertain whether the odds of adjudication success increase when we take predictor variables from the Westlakean, Burkean, and Vattelian perspectives into consideration, certain specific operational definitions were used to conduct a series of additional statistical tests of the liberal model. A comparison of the models reveals that the parameter estimates for joint democracy are consistently positive and statistically significant, even when controlling for trade concentration and economic openness.
