Strength and Weakness of the New International Court

Abstract

For an adequate understanding of the origin, jurisdiction and functions of the newly established court of international justice at the Hague, it will be necessary to revert to the two Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907 and to examine the organization of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague created and developed at: those Conferences. The characteristic feature of the Court of Arbitration as distinguished from the new Permanent Court of Justice lies in the fact that the personnel of the former consists of an eligible list or panel, of which there are now some one hundred and twenty persons throughout the world, from which the two nations proposing to enter into arbitration may select their judges for the particular case, whereas the new court has a fixed bench whose members have a tenure of nine years and are subject to re-election. The word "permanent" used in both titles refers-to the institution itself, for which permanency was designed, rather than to the composition of the court.