In the nineteen years of active life of the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ), 1922–1940, the Court gave twenty-seven advisory opinions. By way of contrast, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in the forty-four years 1946–1990, has given twenty advisory opinions. This is despite the fact that, prima facie, the capacity to request advisory opinions of the Court is wider under the United Nations Charter and the ICJ Statute than it was under the Covenant of the League of Nations and the PCIJ Statute. In point of fact, however, that appearance is misleading, because, in practice, the capacity to request an advisory opinion of the Permanent Court was more generously applied in important respects than is the capacity to request an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice. It is the purpose of this paper to recall that this was so and to consider what light the PCIJ experience may shed upon the current potential of the International Court of Justice. It is appreciated, of course, that such light will not be defining, because the frequency of requests for the Court's advisory opinions depends on a number of factors, of which capacity to make a request is just one, and not the most important.

The Provisions of the Covenant, the Statute, and the Rules of Court

Article 14 of the Covenant of the League of Nations provided: