Building Anew 401Certain features of the League were reproduced in the UN, though of-
ten in somewhat altered form. One example was the requirement for regis-
tration of treaties. Under the League Covenant, unregistered treaties had
been stated to be not legally binding. Th e UN Charter was less draconian.
An unregistered treaty would still be legally binding, but the parties to it
were barred from invoking it before any UN organ (such as the World
Court).
Finally, it may be noted that a new World Court was established, known
formally as the International Court of Justice (I.C.J.). Th is new Court was vir-
tually identical in its arrangement and operations to the now- defunct
P.C.I.J.— to the point that the single expression “World Court” can safely be
used to refer to both of them as if they were a single continuing entity. Th e
transition between them was as smooth as possible. In January 1946, all of the
judges of the P.C.I.J. resigned. Most were then swift ly elected onto the new
Court. But several new judges were needed, due to retirements (for example, of
Anzilotti and Bustamante). Th ere were some notable fi gures among these, in-
cluding Álvarez from Chile and McNair from Britain. Serge Krylov, from the
Soviet Union, brought a socialist presence onto the bench for the fi rst time.
Some new ground was broken in the area of codifi cation of international
law. One of the tasks explicitly assigned by the UN Charter to the UN Gen-
eral Assembly (a body comprising all of the member states of the or ga ni za-
tion) was to encourage “the progressive development of international law
and its codifi cation.” To this end, the General Assembly duly established a
body called the International Law Commission (I.L.C.) in 1947. Its members
were not states, but individual experts in the fi eld of international law, elected
by the General Assembly. Among the early members were a number of
prominent fi gures, including Scelle, Brierly, Lauterpacht, and Hudson. (Ver-
dross served on it later, as did Krylov.) It has held one session a year since its
establishment, functioning as a sort of combination of a “think tank” and a
legislative draft ing body. It operates far below the level of general public
attention— and is perhaps all the more eff ective for that.
From Hope to Paralysis
Th e establishment of the UN in 1945 was not accompanied by anything like
the euphoria that had greeted the founding of the League of Nations aft er