International Courts

History of Universal International Courts

The idea of creating permanent international courts can be traced to the second Hague Conference in 1907. That conference produced a skeletal framework for the Court of Arbitral Justice (CAJ) and a draft convention for the International Prize Court (IPC), although the latter was not ratified by a single conference participant.

Immediately after the Hague Conference, five Central American republics decided to create an international court. This Central American Court of Justice (CACJ) functioned for ten years. Its jurisdiction spanned interstate disputes as well as individual complaints against governments of the contracting parties for breaches of international law.

The next stage in the development of international courts occurred at the end of World War I with the creation of the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ) in 1920, based on Article 14 of the League of Nations' Covenant. Toward the close of World War II, the Allied powers concluded that a new judicial system was needed for settling international disputes peacefully. Provision was made for that court in both the Atlantic Charter and in draft proposals for the creation of the United Nations (UN).

Before the UN's founding in San Francisco on April 25, 1945, the United States assembled the Committee of Jurists from forty-four states to discuss the establishment of a permanent international court. That committee drafted the Statute of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Most of the provisions were taken almost verbatim from the PCIJ Statute. The statute for this new world court was submitted to the UN founding conference and adopted along with the UN Charter on June 26, 1945. Both legal documents were brought into force on October 24, 1945. The raison d'être of the ICJ is found in Article 1 of the UN Charter.

The ICJ is the principal judicial organ of the UN. All UN members are automatically considered parties to the ICJ Statute. Non-UN states may become parties if they meet certain preestablished criteria. So far, three non-UN members have become parties to the ICJ Statute—Switzerland (1948), Liechtenstein (1950), and San Marino (1954). The UN elects fifteen highly qualified judges, representing the major legal systems of the world, to serve on the Court for nine-year terms in The Hague. The judges give advisory opinions and hand down judgments that are binding on parties that agree to abide by those decisions.

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