This Article analyzes long-standing disagreements over dissent's effect on judicial legitimacy, independence, and legal doctrine by undertaking the first comparative study of dissent practices across three leading tribunals, the International Court of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights, and the European Court of Justice. Surprisingly, we find that each of the central claims in debates over dissent at international courts is mistaken. We find that the presence of dissents has little systematic impact on legitimacy; the key factor instead is patterns of dissent that suggest bias among international judges. We find that the effects of dissent on judicial independence are mediated by a third factor, namely the length and renewability of judicial terms of office. Finally, we find that dissents promote law development, but little evidence that today's dissents form the basis for future majority rulings. We then outline a research agenda to examine the impact of dissent at the larger universe of international courts.

本文通过对三个主要法庭（国际法院、欧洲人权法院和欧洲法院）的异议实践进行首次比较研究，分析了关于异议对司法合法性、独立性和法律学说的影响的长期分歧的正义。令人惊讶的是，我们发现国际法庭上关于异议的辩论中的每一个核心主张都是错误的。我们发现异议的存在对合法性几乎没有系统性影响；相反，关键因素是表明国际法官存在偏见的异议模式。我们发现，异议对司法独立的影响受到第三个因素的影响，即司法任期的长度和可连任性。最后，我们发现异议促进了法律的发展，但几乎没有证据表明今天的异议构成了未来多数裁决的基础。然后，我们概述了一项研究议程，以检查异议对更大范围的国际法院的影响。