This article explains the rapid proliferation in international courts first in the post WWII and then the post Cold War era. It examines the larger international judicial complex, showing how developments in one region and domain affect developments in similar and distant regimes. Situating individual developments into their larger context, and showing how change occurs incrementally and slowly over time, allows one to see developments in economic, human rights and war crimes systems as part of

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... a longer term evolutionary process of the creation of international judicial authority. Evolution is not the same as teleology; we see that some international courts develop and change while others stay at in their same role and with the same low level of activity for long periods of time. The evolutionary approach of this article suggests that building judicial authority evolves through practice and takes time, and that the overall international judicial context and developments in parallel institutions shape the development of individual ICs. The international judiciary has grown extensively in the post-Cold war era. In 1985 there were six permanent international courts. Today, there are at least 26 permanent international courts, and well over a hundred quasi-legal and ad hoc systems that interpret international rules and assess compliance with international law (Romano, 2011). The changes occurring in international adjudication are easily observable in the rising newspaper coverage of transnational legal bodies, in the language of states and transnational advocates that increasingly use law-based arguments to make their case, and in complaints that international actors are speaking to issues that are or should be purely matters for domestic decision. Yet we have very little understanding of the forces contributing to these changes. This article investigates larger dynamics driving the development of the international judiciary. I reconstruct the establishment and amendment of twenty-five permanent international courts, weaving together legal and institutional histories to embed changes in the international