II. ELECTION OF JUDGES The judges and deputy judges of the court are elected by sepa rate concurrent votes of the Council and the Assembly of the League of Nations, a majority vote of the members of each of those bodies being necessary to an election. The voting is confined to a list of eligible candidates nominated by the members of the old Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague established by the Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907. That Court of Arbi tration was made up by each power signatory to the Hague Con vention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes selecting not more than four persons who were required to be "of known competency in questions of international law, of the highest moral reputation and disposed to accept the duties of arbitrators." The persons thus selected were inscribed as members of the Court of Arbitration in a list which was sent to all the contracting powers.
When a controversy was to be brought before the Court of Arbitration, five persons were to be selected from this list by the parties to constitute the tribunal to hear and determine the case. The list of members of the Court of Arbitration accordingly really constitutes a panel from which in each case the arbitral tribunal is selected, and this panel is composed of as many little national groups as there were states signing the Hague Convention and making appointments under it. Under the statute of 1920 creating the Permanent Court of International Justice, when a judge of the new court is to be elected, each of these national groups in the old court is called upon to nominate not more than four candi dates, not more than two being of their own nationality. All the nominations thus made are entered in a single list to which the votes of the Council and the Assembly for the new judges are confined.
The experience of many years has shown that the character of the men appointed to the old Court of Arbitration has been such as to withdraw them to a great degree from the most disturb ing influences of local politics and to make them specially familiar with the persons who would be fitted for judges of the new court, and the statue conferring the power of nomination upon them contains an erpress provision that "before making these nomina tions, each national group is recommended to consult its highest court of justice, its legal faculties and schools of law, and its national academies and national sections of international acad emies devoted to the study of law." The statute creating the new court also lays down for the guidance of the Assembly and Council in casting their votes the following rule : "At every election the electors shall bear in mind that not only should all the persons appointed as members of the court possess the qualifications required, but the whole body also should represent the main forms of civilization and the principal legal systems of the world."
If after three meetings there remains a vacancy for which no candidate shall have obtained an absolute majority of votes both in the assembly and in the council, then a joint conference com mittee is provided for, which shall endeavour to agree and report upon a candidate, and the conference committee may, by unani mous agreement, go out of the list of nominations for a candidate. If the conference fails, then the judges of the court already elected may proceed to fill the vacancy by selection from amongst the candidates voted upon in the assembly or in the council.
The first election of judges to constitute the court was held at Geneva on Sept. 14-16, 1921. The list of eligible candidates pro posed by the members of the old Court of Arbitration included 89 names, and from this list 11 judges and three deputy judges were elected by concurrent ballots of the Council and Assembly, and a fourth deputy judge was chosen upon the report of a conference committee accepted by both bodies. The judges elected were re spectively citizens of France, Great Britain, Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, Japan, Brazil, Cuba and the United States of America. The deputy judges were citizens of Norway, Rumania, the Serb-Croat-Slovene state and China. The members elected met at The Hague on Jan. 3o, 1922, and proceed ed to organize the court by electing Judge Loder (Holland) as president and Judge Weiss (France) as vice-president, appointing Mr. Ake Hammarskjold (Norway) as registrar, and adopting rules regulating the constitution and working of the court and proce dure before it.
The first session for the transaction of judicial business opened on June 15, 1922. The regular sessions provided for were held thenceforward, and during the years 1922-27 there were six regular and six extraordinary sessions. During the same period the court heard, considered and gave decisions in ten contested international cases and upon 13 requests for advisory opinions. Most of the questions considered were novel, difficult and important, and many of them presented differences of opinion which required an author itative decision if the establishment of peace and order in Europe on a reasonable working basis was to proceed after the extensive rearrangements caused by the Treaty of Versailles. The 23 judg ments and opinions rendered were accepted as final. The existence of the court is manifestly beginning to affect international discus sion of disputes and to be recognized as affording a means of es cape from those international deadlocks which have seemed in soluble because neither party felt willing to humiliate itself by surrendering its position.