This paper argues that the framework of Community of Practice is ben-eficial for an understanding of the linguistic practices that international courts andtribunals employ in their interpretative approaches. Other than the frameworks ofthe social network, the speech community, and the epistemic community, theframework of Community of Practice can be said to allow for a more criticalassessment of the social context in which international courts and tribunals function.Such an assessment is crucial in that it is in that social context that interpretativeapproaches can be said to take form and in return shape the social institutions thatinternational courts and tribunals comprise. That is, the framework of Communityof Practice entails the notion that any form of meaning and its subsequent reifica-tions, including, actual language use, are continually negotiated communally as aresult of social interaction and, hence, shape the social constellations in which suchinteraction takes place accordingly.

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• International Courts and Tribunals and TheirLinguistic Practices: A Communities of Practice Approach