Office of the Historian

500.CC/3–2445: Circular telegram

The Acting Secretary of State to Certain Diplomatic Representatives 24

Washington, March 24, 1945—midnight.

Please deliver immediately to the Foreign Minister of the Government to which you are accredited the text of the following invitation;

(Begin text) 1. You will recall that no effort was made during the Dumbarton Oaks Conversations to prepare a statute for the international court of justice envisaged by Chapter VII of the proposals on the establishment of a general international organization that resulted from those discussions. The proposals contemplated that the statute should be either (a) the Statute of the Permanent Court of International [Page 155] Justice,25 continued in force with such modifications as may be desirable, or (b) a new statute in the preparation of which the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice should be used as a basis.26

2. It is now deemed desirable to have a preliminary meeting of jurists of the United Nations to prepare, prior to the San Francisco Conference, a draft of a statute to be submitted to that Conference for consideration.

3. Accordingly, the Government of the United States of America, on behalf of itself and of the Governments of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the Republic of China, invites the Government of (Note: insert name of Government to which you are accredited) to send a representative to a meeting of the United Nations committee of jurists to be convened at Washington on April 9, 1945 for the purpose of preparing a draft of a statute of an international court of justice.

4. The above-named Governments suggest:

A.
That each of the invited Governments appoint one representative to the committee of jurists, to be accompanied, if desired, by not more than two advisers.
B.
That if the work of the committee of jurists is not completed by the time the United Nations Conference begins, sessions should tie continued at San Francisco. (End text).

5. You may inform the Foreign Office that the Chinese Government has designated as its representative Dr. Wang Chung-hui, formerly Judge of the Permanent Court of International Justice, with Dr. Hsu Mo and Dr. D. V. Che-Tsai Hoo as advisers; that the Soviet Government has designated, with the rank of Minister, N. V. Novikov, Counselor of the Soviet Embassy in Washington, with Professors Golunsky and Krylov as advisers; and that the United States Government has designated as its representative Mr. Green H. Hackworth, Legal Adviser of the Department of State, and advisers to be named.27

Grew

  1. The diplomatic representatives in Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, France, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Iran, Iraq, Liberia, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Union of South Africa, Uruguay, Venezuela, and the United Kingdom (for the Missions to Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, Norway, and Yugoslavia); the same invitation was extended to the Philippine Commonwealth in a note of March 28 (500.CC/3–2845); and, in telegram 80 of March 29, 2 p.m., the Minister in Lebanon was instructed to extend the same invitation to the Government of Syria and the Government of Lebanon (500.CC/3–2945). Acceptances were received from all these Governments except those of India and the Union of South Africa.

    The United States informed the other sponsoring Governments of the issuance of the invitation on March 27 by telegram 2364, March 27, 6 p.m., to the Ambassador in the United Kingdom, repeated on the same date to the Ambassadors in the Soviet Union and in China as telegrams 716 and 503, respectively (500.CC/3–2745).

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  2. For text, see Conference Series No. 84: The International Court of Justice: Selected Documents Relating to the Drafting of the Statute (Department of State publication No. 2491), pp. 1–13.↩

  3. For text of the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice with the Revisions Proposed (United States Draft) August 15, 1944, see Postwar Foreign Policy Preparation, 1939–1945 (Department of State publication No. 3580), pp. 666–677; text with some variation in nomenclature printed in The International Court of Justice, pp. 57–72.

    See ibid., pp. 15–52, for official comments relating to the Statute of the Proposed, International Court of Justice; pp. 53–56, for official comments on the provisions of the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals relating to an International Court of Justice, and pp. 57–87, for proposals of the various States regarding alterations in the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice.

    For complete documentation, see vol. 14, United Nations Committee of Jurists, In the series UNCIO Documents.

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  4. For general list of representatives and advisers of the United Nations Committee of Jurists, see The International Court of Justice, pp. 165–167.↩