ABSTRACT
Figure 21.1 Numbers of international courts and tribunals up to 2001 333 Figure 21.2 Global and regional courts and tribunals 334 Figure 21.3 Specialized UN agencies and organizations related to the UN 336 Figure 21.4 Important ILO conventions (with fundamental rights in bold) 342
The end of the Permanent Court of International Justice (1946)
The International Court of Justice is the sixth principal organ of the UN and its legal institution. It is the successor to the Permanent Court of International Justice, which operated within the framework of the League of Nations from 1922 onwards (see §15.7). As the Permanent Court did not function after 1939 and could too easily be linked to the inactivity of the League of Nations, the Allies decided to create a new international court. To prepare the way they set up an Inter-Allied Committee in early 1943, which produced a report at the beginning of 1944. In the interest of continuity the statute of the new court was to be based on that of the Permanent Court. At Dumbarton Oaks the Allies decided that the UN would also have a legal dimension and to give it a stronger position they made the new court a principal organ of the new peace organization. A group of legal experts from 44 states drew up a draft statute, which was further elaborated by a committee at the conference in San Francisco which created the UN. The conference then incorporated the Statute of the International Court of Justice into the UN Charter and urged the UN member states to approve the binding jurisdiction of the Court. In October 1945 the Permanent Court met to disband itself and pass on all its possessions to its successor. At the beginning of 1946 the initial meeting of the UN in London chose the first judges. The new Court decided to hold its inaugural session in The Hague and after negotiations between the UN and the board of the Carnegie
Foundation (see §7.5) it was accommodated in the Peace Palace. The International Court of Justice met for the first time in April 1946.
