Administrative Court of the League of Nations

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The Administrative Court of the League of Nations ( English League of Nations Administrative Tribunal , LNAT ; French Tribunal administratif de la Société des Nations , TASdN ) existed from 1927 to 1946 and was responsible for the legal issues of the employees of the League of Nations, founded in 1920, as well as its organs and affiliated organizations. From a historical point of view, it was the first international court with jurisdiction in the area of ​​the service law of the employees of international organizations . His successor institution is the administrative court of the International Labor Organization , which has existed to this day .

history

The establishment of the administrative court of the League of Nations had become necessary because the League of Nations was not subject to the jurisdiction of its home country Switzerland . The initially envisaged responsibility of the League of Nations for legal proceedings of the employees of the League of Nations turned out to be problematic in 1925 when the first relevant case was referred to an ad hoc committee of lawyers after time-consuming debates in the League of Nations .

Two years later, the League of Nations Assembly decided to set up an administrative court, which initially existed on probation and from 1931 as a permanent organ of the League of Nations. The first three regular judges appointed on December 9, 1927 were Albert Devèze from Belgium , Walther Froelich from Germany and Raffaele Montagna from Italy . The first session of the court took place in February 1928. Walter Froelich's successor was Östen Undén from Sweden in 1934 , and Valdemar Eide from Denmark in 1936 . Augustinus van Rijckevorsel from the Netherlands took over the office from Raffaele Montagna in 1938. Until the beginning of the Second World War in 1939, the administrative court of the League of Nations ruled in 21 cases and after the end of the war until the dissolution of the League of Nations in a further 16 cases.

With the end of the League of Nations in April 1946, the court became the administrative court of the International Labor Organization . The judges in office until the war-related cessation of the court's activities, whose term of office had expired without renewal during the war, were taken over. In addition, the Administrative Court of the League of Nations was a model for other comparable institutions such as the Administrative Court of the United Nations founded in 1949 .

Jurisdiction and Legal Basis

The jurisdiction of the Administrative Court of the League of Nations comprised the legal issues of the employees of the League of Nations and its organs and affiliated organizations such as the International Labor Organization , the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law and the International Nansen Bureau for Refugees . The legal basis of the court was the statute passed on September 26, 1927 by a resolution of the League of Nations Assembly and the rules of procedure passed on February 2, 1928.

Organization and way of working

The administrative court of the League of Nations consisted of three regular judges and three assistant judges from different countries, who were appointed by the League Council for a period of three years. It was the task of the assistant judges to represent the regularly officiating judges in the event of non-attendance or leaving the court through resignation or death. When there were cases, the court met once a year for an ordinary session. The decisions were made with a simple majority and could not be challenged.

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