This contribution focuses on Judge Abraham’s use of the burden of proof, together with a presumption of good faith, to dissent from the findings of the Court on the key substantive question at issue in the Whaling in the Antarctic case (‘Whaling Case’). It assesses the many claims that Abraham made in this connection including (a) that all allegations of bad faith carry with them a heavy burden of proof (section II); (b) that Australia attracted this burden by relevantly alleging that Japan had acted in bad faith (section III); and (c) that Japan, as a sovereign State, should automatically have been entitled to a presumption of good faith when claiming that its whaling activities came within the scope of a recognised legal right (section IV). The analysis reveals Judge Abraham’s approach to be unduly selective yet overly general. He justified how he assigned the burden of proof uniquely on the basis of good faith considerations, ignoring all competing burden of proof presumptions such as those applicable to the invoking of exceptions, yet failed to adduce authority showing how the specific type of bad faith he considered Australia to have implicitly alleged attracts the burden of proof he imposed. His dissenting opinion is also quite inconsistent. At one point it admits that Japan did not have a relevant pouvoir discrétionnaire, but at another it seems to use the combination of a presumption of good faith and the burden of proof to advocate the rehabilitation of the wide notion of sovereign power out-of-step with modern-day international legal thinking. This contribution accordingly shows that judges of the International Court of Justice must take greater care when employing devices common in domestic systems of law, such as the burden of proof, in the quite particular context of state-state dispute resolution.