Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1945, General: The United Nations, Volume I

500.CC/4–2345

Memorandum by the Secretary of State to President Truman

[Washington,] April 23, 1945.

Subject: The Conference of the Committee of Jurists.

As proposed at Dumbarton Oaks and confirmed at Yalta, a Committee of Jurists, representative of 44 nations, met in Washington from April 9 thru 20 to develop recommendations to present to the San Francisco Conference on the statute of the new Court.⁷³

The Committee took as a basis for its work the present statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice and made many changes, the more important of which are listed below.

Briefly the court should be composed of fifteen judges, as is the present court; the judges to hold office for nine-year periods, one-third retiring every three years.

It is to have jurisdiction over such cases as parties to the statute may agree to present to it. There is a strong feeling on the part of some of the representatives at the meeting of the Committee of Jurists that the Court should have compulsory jurisdiction (that any government should have the right to bring a case before the Court against any other government without the necessity for special agreements). This would constitute a departure from the present statute under which it is made optional with the parties to the statute of the Court to accept compulsory jurisdiction generally or on the basis of reciprocity. This was left for decision at San Francisco.

The provisions in the statute authorizing the Assembly and the Council of the League of Nations to call upon the Court for advisory opinions has been retained as was contemplated by the Dumbarton Oaks Proposal, substituting the General Assembly and the Security Council of the new organization for the comparable bodies of the League.

There was a wide difference of view in the Committee on the question of the nomination of the judges. At present the nominations are made by the representatives of the various countries on the panel of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague under a convention of 1907⁷⁴ and by similar groups set up for that purpose by countries that are not parties to The Hague convention. There was considerable support in the Committee for having these nominations made directly by the respective governments. This question remains open for discussion in San Francisco.

The Committee suggested the incorporation in the statute of an article designed to facilitate future amendments.

I am happy to say that the jurists demonstrated throughout their work a spirit of earnestness and complete cooperation.

E. R. Stettinius, Jr.

73. For the “Record of the Meeting of the Committee of Jurists for the Preparation of a Draft of a Statute for the International Court of Justice to be Submitted to the United Nations Conference on International Organization”, see The International Court of Justice, pp. 98–133.

    For full documentation of the meeting of the Committee of Jurists, see UNCIO Documents, vol. 14.

74. For text of convention for the pacific settlement of international disputes concluded October 18, 1907, at The Hague, see Foreign Relations, 1907, pt. 2, p. 1181.