S.J.D. Candidate
inavarretearec at sjd.law.harvard.edu
Dissertation
Principles and Process of Judgment Interpretation in International Law
At its core, my dissertation explores what we may call “judgment interpretation”: how interpreters determine what international courts have actually decided. It begins with a deceptively simple question: when international courts speak, how do we know what they really said? International lawyers, judges, and governments spend vast energy parsing decisions of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and other tribunals, yet we lack a coherent framework for interpreting those texts themselves. The dissertation seeks to advance a systematic theory of judgment interpretation in international law. Drawing on the ICJ’s case law, as well as comparative insights from treaty and statutory interpretation, I identify the materials interpreters may legitimately use and propose principles for how they should be weighed, sequenced, and applied. The goal is both practical and theoretical: to provide a toolkit that can help resolve real-world interpretive disputes and to explain why such a framework has been missing for so long.
Fields of Research and Supervisors
- Interpretive Objects and Sources of Law in International Law with Professor Gabriella Blum, Harvard Law School, Principal Faculty Supervisor
- Theories of Interpretation with Professor Ryan D. Doerfler, Harvard Law School
- Judicial Writings with Judge Hilary Charlesworth, International Court of Justice; Professor, Melbourne Law School
Additional Research Interests
- International Dispute Settlement
- Human Rights
- Judicial Decision Making
- International Procedural Law
Education
- Harvard Law School, S.J.D. Candidate 2026 – Present
- Harvard Law School, LL.M. Program 2025-2026 (requirements fulfilled, degree waived)
- McGill University, Faculty of Law, Canada, B.C.L./J.D. 2016
Representative Publications
- Research Handbook on Intelligence and International Law (Russell Buchan & Iñaki Navarrete eds., Edward Elgar 2025)
- Iñaki Navarrete & Russell Buchan, Out of the Legal Wilderness: Peacetime Espionage, International Law and the Existence of Customary Exceptions, 51 Cornell Int’l L.J. 897 (2019)
- Iñaki Navarrete, L’Espionnage en Temps de Paix en Droit International Public [Peacetime Espionage under Public International Law], 53 Can. Y.B. Int’l L. 1 (2015)
Additional Information
- Google Scholar
- Languages: English, French, Spanish
Last Updated: June 12, 2026