What has been the impact of the World Court on world affairs in the fifty years of its existence? How – other than in terms of purely legal analysis – should we attempt to assess its effectiveness? Is it a meaningful factor in world affairs?

One may begin by offering some broad parameters, so as to evaluate the Court by reference to standards which are appropriate and realistic – which correspond to its objectives, its power, and its organizational structure, rather than tests which are idealistic, misconceived or impossible to satisfy.

The Court is composed of fifteen judges, each elected for a nine-year term by the General Assembly and the Security Council. Their selection or election is a political process, sometimes linked to other UN electoral processes. Nominations are made not by governments, at any rate not directly. Nominees are named by national groups in the Permanent Court of Arbitration, by the groups of four potential arbitrators in turn named by Parties to the Hague Conventions on Peaceful Settlement of 1899 and 1907, or their equivalent. This is meant to depoliticize in a measure a political process and sometimes somewhat may, as it has, for example, in the United States, Sweden and the Netherlands.