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The International Court of Justice: Admissibility of hearings of petitioners by the Committee on South West Africa1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 May 2009
Extract
The latest Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice of June 1st, 1956, is much less noteworthy for the subject-matter of the dispute itself than for the differing angles from which an essentially simple legal question can be envisaged, which together indeed represent a mosaic of all possible variations of legal reasoning.
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References
page 315 note 2 Comp. about this Opinion the observations made in this Review, vol. I (1953/1954); p. 235–252.
page 316 note 1 Comp. about this Opinion the observations made in this Review, vol. III, p. 40–51.
page 316 note 2 It is almost incredible how often this political body fails to convey the real purport of a legal question in its formulation. This unfortunate fact must presumably be attributed to the reluctance of the General Assembly to consult its Legal Committee in these matters. Comp. also the remarks made on this subject in the separate opinion of Judge Lauterpacht (p. 37/39).
page 317 note 1 The English text of the Opinion of 1950 is authoritative. The French text expresses the idea perhaps even more clearly: “Le degré de surveillance … ne saurait donc dépasser celui qui a été appliqué sous le Régime des Mandats”.
page 318 note 1 Judge Lauterpacht rejects this reasoning: “This argument I find unconvincing. It assumes that fraudulent petitions are the rule, and not the exception” (p. 41).Google Scholar
page 319 note 1 Directly contrary to this view is Judge Lauterpacht's opinion (p. 48) according to which “the supervision by the United Nations of the Mandate for South West Africa constitutes the most important example of succession in international organization.”
page 321 note 1 This statement relates to the final argument used by the minority (see infra).
page 321 note 2 This reference which takes indeed an unduly formal view of the task of the Court was correctly ruled out by Judge Lauterpacht in his separate opinion (p. 36/37) because the passage quoted is not germane to the present issue.
page 323 note 1 Vice-President Badawi considered (p. 71) that, although the former practice under the Mandates System was as described in the minority opinion, the Report of 1927 made available to the Council, and now makes available to the General Assembly, the possibility, in exceptional cases, of undertaking the hearing of petitioners, — but only ad hoc by the General Assembly itself and not by way of any general delegation to another organ.