paragraph 151 in volume 2, chapter 9, Jurisdiction and Admissibility: General Concepts
The ability of the Court to decide a case has to be distinguished from the question whether in the circumstances it would be compatible with the Court’s status of principal judicial organ of the United Nations, with its judicial function or with its judicial character for it to decide the particular case. The use of the unusual expression the matter (for which there is no equivalent in the French text) in Article 36, paragraph 6, of the Statute, and not the dispute which is used in th…