Abstract
Abstract The Permanent Court played a vital role in the emergence of the law of international organizations. Existing accounts of this development focus on the Court’s conception of organizations. This paper argues that this interpretation underappreciates the controversy regarding the performance of the Permanent Court’s judicial function and its place within the inter-war institutional order. Crucially, it is claimed that initially the Permanent Court adopted the perspective of an authoritative interpreter, limiting the scope for recognising the autonomy of organizations. However, the Court began to adopt a more restrained conception of its judicial function and recognised that international organizations possessed a form of compétence de la compétence. This recognition paved the way for a ‘law of international organizations’ to emerge, but, crucially, was not based on any revised understanding of what it meant to ‘be’ an international organization, but rather, on what it meant to ‘be’ an international court.
Highlights
Judicial development has been the central trope in legal writing on international organizations.[2]
The Permanent Court played a vital role in the emergence of the law of international organizations
This paper argues that this interpretation underappreciates the controversy regarding the performance of the Permanent Court’s judicial function and its place within the inter-war institutional order
Summary
The adoption of the Covenant of the League was ‘an attempt to organise the hitherto unorganised community of states by a written constitution.’[49]. Hurst and Miller prepared a revised text which distinguished between the Court’s competence to determine disputes submitted to it by states and its ability to advise on questions referred to it by the organs of the League.[68] Before the Final Drafting Committee, the two functions were disaggregated further.[69] The advisory jurisdiction, referred to as such for the first time, was delimited in a separate sentence, further differentiating it from the contentious jurisdiction. The PCIJ used the Eastern Carelia opinion unambiguously announce its independence from the League, to closely watching American audiences who, while renouncing the League, had not yet given up hope of acceding to the Court’s Statute Up until this point, the Permanent Court had repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to assume the mantle of authoritative interpreter, it had shown little regard for the interpretations of institutions regarding their own competencies
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