International Court of Justice history

The Hague Peace Conference of 1899, convened on the initiative of the Russian Czar Nicholas II, marked the beginning of a third phase in the modern history of international arbitration.

A few years later, in 1907, a second Hague Peace Conference, to which the States of Central and South America were also invited, revised the Convention and improved the rules governing arbitral proceedings.

Notwithstanding the fate of these proposals, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, which in 1913 took up residence in the Peace Palace that had been built for it thanks to a gift from Andrew Carnegie, has made a positive contribution to the development of international law.

Following approaches by the Netherlands Government in the spring of 1919, it was decided that the PCIJ should have its permanent seat at the Peace Palace in The Hague, which it would share with the Permanent Court of Arbitration.

In a resolution of 13 December 1920, it called upon the Council to submit a protocol adopting the Statute to the Members of the League of Nations, and decided that the Statute should come into force once a majority of Member States had ratified it.

The first elections were held on 14 September 1921.

Following approaches by the Netherlands Government in the spring of 1919, it was decided that the PCIJ should have its permanent seat at the Peace Palace in The Hague, which it would share with the Permanent Court of Arbitration. It was accordingly in the Peace Palace that the Court’s preliminary session devoted to the elaboration of the Court’s Rules opened on 30 January 1922, and it was there too that its inaugural sitting was held on 15 February 1922, with the Dutch jurist Bernard C. J. Loder as President.

In 1940 the Court relocated to Geneva, leaving one judge in The Hague together with a few Registry officials of Dutch nationality.

Early in 1943, the United Kingdom Government took the initiative of inviting a number of experts to London to constitute an informal Inter-Allied Committee to examine the matter.

A meeting was subsequently convened in Washington, in April 1945, of a committee of jurists representing 44 States.

The judges of the PCIJ all resigned on 31 January 1946, and the election of the first Members of the International Court of Justice took place on 6 February 1946, at the First Session of the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council.

The very same day the ICJ held its inaugural session at the Peace Palace and heard its first matter, the Corfu Channel case, on May 22, 1947.

In November 1950 the General Assembly questioned the ICJ concerning the position of a state that had included reservations in its signature of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, as some signatories of the Convention objected to these reservations.

In its advisory opinion of May 28, 1951, the ICJ determined that even if a convention contains no specific rule on reservations, it does not follow that they are automatically prohibited.

The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1989.

Highet, Keith. "The Peace Palace Heats Up: The World Court in Business Again?" American Journal of International Law 85 (1991):646.

After establishing that it did, in fact, have valid or sufficient jurisdiction, on April 8, 1993, the ICJ indicated that the FRY could take certain provisional measures.

Such criticisms ignore the results the Court can achieve [e.g., as a consequence of the Court's determination in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya/Chad case (1994), a peace agreement was signed, and Libyan forces withdrew from disputed territory], and its often subtle successes.

The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1995.

The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1996.

The Hague and Boston: Nijhoff, 1997.

On July 2, 1999, Croatia presented an application against the FRY for having violated the Genocide Convention.

Under article 36 of the court’s statute, any state may consent to the court’s compulsory jurisdiction in advance by filing a declaration to that effect with the UN secretary-general, and by 2000 more than 60 countries had issued such a declaration.

The ICJ ruled against the arguments of the FRY. It observed that, under the terms of Article 61, paragraph 1 of its Statute, an application for a revised judgment can be made only when it is based on the discovery of a fact unknown at the time the judgment was rendered. Thus, the ICJ in its decision of February 3, 2003, found the FRY's application for a revision inadmissible.