The Peace Palace in The Hague is a monument of sandstone and stained glass, a building that seems to hold its breath. On the morning of April 18, 1946, fifteen men in judicial robes filed into the Great Hall of Justice. They came from China and Poland, from France and Egypt, from the United States and the Soviet Union. They were the first judges of the International Court of Justice, and their inaugural meeting was an act of profound, fragile hope.
The world outside was still raw. The war had ended only months before. The idea was not new—a Permanent Court of International Justice had existed before the war—but this was a rebirth, an annex to the newborn United Nations Charter. Its mandate was simple in statement, monumental in ambition: to adjudicate legal disputes submitted by states, and to give advisory opinions on international legal questions.
There were no fireworks, no cheering crowds. The proceedings were procedural, administrative. They elected their President, José Gustavo Guerrero of El Salvador, and their Vice-President. They discussed rules of procedure, the design of the seal. The power in the room was entirely potential, a vessel waiting to be filled. It represented a belief that the complex, often violent, relations between nations could be subjected to the slow, reasoned discipline of law. That a gavel, not a gun, could have the final word. The court still sits in that same hall today, its docket a chronicle of our persistent conflicts and our enduring, if intermittent, faith in dialogue.