In Full Flower 331arrangement was really for arbitration, and not necessarily for judicial set-
tlement. Th e other reason is that the P.C.A. was not— and still is not— a
standing court with a continuous existence. Rather, it is a roster of names of
persons who are prepared to act as arbitrators as and when they might be
called on. But any given panel, once it has discharged its task, is disbanded,
and its members melt back (so to speak) into the general roster, to await a
future summons that might, or might not, come. Martens aptly described the
so- called court as “but an idea which occasionally assumes shape and then
disappears.” Th e P.C.A. is therefore best thought of as the world’s fi rst per-
manent arrangement for the judicial or arbitral settlement of disputes.
An important point of contention concerned the giving of reasons by ar-
bitrators. It was generally accepted that, in judicial dispute resolution, rea-
sons must be stated when judgments are given. Th is is seen as an inherent
feature of the judicial function as such. But that was not so widely agreed
regarding arbitration. Martens, for example, was strongly opposed to a gen-
eral rule requiring arbitrators to give reasons. His rationale was that the
unanimity of arbitrators was more important than the giving of reasons,
and that setting out reasons could have the undesirable eff ect of eliciting
dissenting opinions from arbitrators who might otherwise have quietly ac-
quiesced. Th is position did not prevail in the draft ing of the P.C.A. Conven-
tion at the First Hague Conference, but it indicates an important distinction
between arbitration and judicial settlement.
Th e Dispute Settlement Convention entered into force in 1900, and the
P.C.A. roster soon became a kind of global Who’s Who of prominent inter-
national law academics. Business, however, was less than brisk. By the time
the Second Hague Peace Conference convened in 1907, P.C.A. panels had
decided only four cases.
Other Courts
Th e establishment of the P.C.A. left a great deal to be desired in the eyes of
those who hoped to see the emergence of a true world judicial body. Th is
group included Martens. In the years prior to the Great War, three attempts
were made to create standing international courts— all of them, however,
without lasting success. Two of these took place at the Second Hague Peace
Conference, and one shortly aft erward.