In Geological Time a quarter of a century does not rate high on the scale of perspectives. But for law and lawyers, for ongoing politics and policies, twenty-five years in an age of electronic communications, ballistic missile speeds, and space activities can include a planetary march of revolutionary proportions. Indeed, the rise and fall of empires now may be counted in years or decades rather than in centuries. The paradox of our age is that the future marks a constant acceleration of political processes, with conservative forces such as law and other social controls hard put to keep up with escaping events. The compression of time at the end of the twentieth century is its dominant feature.

The Statute of the International Court of Justice specifies that the nominations of candidates for election to the Court shall be made by “national groups” constituted either by the national groups in the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PGA), or by national groups appointed for this purpose “under the same conditions” as those prescribed for members of the PCA under the Hague Convention of 1907. As of May 1987, about half the member states of the United Nations — seventy-six out of one hundred and fifty-eight — were members of the PCA, but among these only sixty-two had functioning national groups. Official United Nations documents show that a great many national groups from other states, perhaps created on an ad hoc basis for the regular elections to the Court, submit nominations as provided under Article 4(2) of the Statute. Once a candidate has been nominated by one or more national groups, the state of which he is a national is free to decide whether formally to sponsor his candidacy and to seek the support of other states in the elections to be held in the General Assembly and the Security Council.