This chapter summarizes and synthesizes the main findings of the preceding chapters and spells out a number of propositions about the ICJ's role in the process of legal development. The broader argument emerging from the discussion is that the Court's role as a law-formative agency depends less on factors internal to its jurisprudence than on external variables: whether or not it wants to, the Court is influential where it is being provided with an opportunity regularly to pronounce on a particular area of law, where its pronouncements concern areas of law open to judicial development, and where it faces little or no competition by other agencies of legal development.