 Let us turn now to the conduct of proceedings at the ICJ and see a little bit more concretely what are the various steps and also the incidents that may occur along the way. That is, between the moment that the court is seized of a dispute and the moment it delivers its judgment. The court is seized of a dispute, either through the notification of a special agreement, as you know, or through the filing of an application, if the basis of jurisdiction invoked by the claimant state is a compromise reclose, is two optional closers or an expected consent in a case of foreign progratum. From that moment onwards, the judicial machinery is set in motion. And a first procedural step is taken by the registry of the court, under various provisions of the statute and the rules, the details of which are rather unimportant here. Under those provisions, the registry notifies all UN, the Secretary General of the UN and all the UN member states and other states entitled to appear before the court. A special notification is also addressed to states that are parties to multilateral treaties whose interpretation is in question in the case. And furthermore, if that treaty is the constituent element of an international organisation or if it has been adopted within the framework of that organisation, such organisation will also be notified and it will receive copies of the written pleadings. Notified states may also request to receive copies of the written pleadings of the parties. All these may sound very administrative and purely procedural, but the publicity given in this way to the case and the automatic character of such publicity stands in sharp contrast to arbitral proceedings. When a dispute is brought before the ICJ, the case is public and it resonates within the world community and as we shall see later, it is because a certain publicity is given to a case that various types of interventions in the proceedings exist. Then after having a certain devues of the party, the court issues a first procedural order by which time limits are fixed for the filing of the party's written pleadings. And there are usually two rounds of written pleadings. The claimant writes a memorial exposing all its arguments concerning the jurisdiction of the court and the merits of its own claims and providing of course all evidence in support of its case. The respondent is then offered the same amount of time to write in response what is called a counter memorial. And then usually a second round of written pleading takes place, with the claimant filing a reply and the respondent filing a rejoinder in response to the reply. When the parties have filed all their written pleadings, oral pleadings take place and there again two rounds of oral pleadings are usually organized. At the end of the oral pleadings, the agents, that is the official state representatives having usually the rank of an ambassador, the agents of each disputing state reads out their respective final submissions. And then the court begins its deliberation and the judgment is delivered a few months later. I shall come back on the internal deliberative process leading to the actual drafting of judgments in a separate video. If the respondent state does not appear in court or if it fails to defend its case, the claimant may call upon the court to decide in favor of its claim. But before doing so, and as article 53 of the statute states, the court must however satisfy itself not only that it has jurisdiction but also that the claim is well founded in fact and law end of quote. Well, this is the procedure in its streamlined form when no procedural incidents occur. But incidental proceedings do happen most of the time and they will increase the complexity of the entire process. Let us turn now to those incidental proceedings in the next videos and readings.