paragraph 4 in volume 1, chapter 1, Introduction
For systematic presentation, the histories of the Permanent Court of International Justice and the present International Court of Justice - often loosely called The World Court - are put together. From that perspective, their joint history can be placed into five periods.
The first, the formative period, ran from 1922 to 1931, when it came to a brutal finish with the controversial advisory opinion on the Customs Régime between Germany and Austria (1931).1 That was widely believed to have been motivated to an exces…