The political attacks being mounted today against international organisation—the United Nations General Assembly, and especially UNESCO—are paralleled by some differences and challenges to the International Court of Justice, and this on the part of some of the Court's erstwhile most enthusiastic supporters. It used to be almost an act of political faith for Western, or Western-influenced, para-professional legal associations, meeting in the immediate post-War era and up to the 1960s, to reaffirm their support for the principle of international adjudication as the prime method of peaceful settlement of international disputes, and for the acceptance by all States of the compulsory jurisdiction of the World Court as the most affirmative and concrete way of demonstrating their endorsement of that principle. It was once a key element in the instructions of Western delegations to international legal conferences to insist upon the primacy of judicial settlement in any formal legal affirmation of the principle of peaceful settlement and in any listing of the alternative modes of its exercise.

In this, the inaugural Manfred Lachs Memorial Lecture given at the seat of the International Court of Justice, we celebrate the judicial life and learning, and also the judicial wisdom of the longest-serving judge of the Court and its sometime President, who died on January 14th, 1993. Manfred Lachs came to the Court in February, 1967, having been elected in October, 1966, in the first elections following the Court's politically and, in some elements at least (judicial recusation, as example)legally controversial decision in South West Africa, Second Phase1 which had been rendered only two months before the UN Security Council and General Assembly regular triennial balloting on renewal or replacement of one third of the Court's membership.

The institutionalization of international conflict-resolution on a third-party basis, with the creation of a Permanent Court of Arbitration, was one of the high hopes of the political leaders at the First Hague Peace Conference in 1899. In the early phase, from creation of the Court in 1902 until the outbreak of World War I in 1914, 17 cases were initiated before the Court. There was a quite understandable gap, through the War years, until 1921; and then, in the decade until 1931,7 further cases were brought before the Court. This was followed by another awkward hiatus as to cases throughout the 1930s, apparently because of the renewed international tensions in Europe that culminated in World War II. There were no cases before the Court during the War years, the seat of the Court being under belligerent occupation for most of that time. The fact remains, however, that since World War II and, indeed, since 1931, there have been only two cases (both minor ones) brought before the Court, (or three, if we accept the Court Registry's retroactive classification, in its 1990 Annual Report, of the continuing Iran-US Claims Tribunal, which had begun its work in 1981, as one of its own cases).

Le premier ministre Jean Chrétien annoncait au Parlement le 17 mars 2003 — trois jours avant l’invasion de l’Iraq — que le Canada n’assisterait pas à une intervention par la force armée, sauf sous l’égide des Nations Unies et avec l’autorité préalable d’une résolution du Conseil de Sécurité. La declaration du premier ministre avait réaffirmé la politique historique classique du Canada, visant la primauté de la Charte et l’autorité du Conseil de Sécurité sur l’application de la force armée.

“Peaceful Coexistence,” a basic premise for minimum world public orderduring the Cold War, has re-emerged as a possible paradigm-model for worldorder in the present era of clashing or colliding civilizations. When theidea of codifying the general principles of peaceful coexistence was firstadvanced in the still-continuing Cold War, it was rejected by specialistlegal bodies like the United Nations' International Law Commission and alsothe Institut de droit international as too “political” and thus incapable ofbeing reduced to a scientific-legal foundation. The resultingintellectual-legal gap was promptly filled, however, by the non-governmentalInternational Law Association (ILA), which established its own expertcommittee. Long-range fruits of this ILA initiative — apart from theall-important opening of a direct East-West legal dialogue — were thecelebrated UN General Assembly Resolution 2625 of October 1970 and theacceptance of the pragmatic, empirical, problem-solving, step-by-stepapproach to resolving East-West conflicts in concrete cases — the ultimateroad to détente on a deliberately nonideological case-by-case basis. TheCanadian Branch of the ILA, with the support of the Canadian Department ofForeign Affairs' Legal Division, was a leader in the ILA's decision to takeup that project and participated fully until its successful completion.

The regular, triennial elections for the International Court of Justice (ICJ), with a third of the fifteen seats on the Court coming up for renewal or replacement, were held on November 15, 1990. The five successful candidates thus elected, or re-elected, qualified for regular nine-year terms beginning on February 6, 1991. In the result, two incumbent judges, from France (Judge Guillaume) and Great Britian (Judge Jennings), who were candidates for re-election, were successful. Two other incumbent judges, from Argentina (the retiring Court President, Judge Ruda) and from Sénégal (Judge M'Baye), did not present themselves for re-election. A third incumbent judge, from India (Judge Pathak, who had been elected to the Court in a casual election held in April 1989), was nominated for re-election by a country other than his own, but chose to withdraw after the close of nominations and before the actual balloting. These three seats of the Court were filled by the election of candidates from Venezuela (Aguilar Mawdsley), Madagascar (Ranjeva), and Sri Lanka (Weeramantry).