Introduction

On February 5, 1970, in the Great Hall of Justice of the Peace Palace, in The Hague, sixteen judges of the International Court of Justice, scores of lawyers, representing the governments of Belgium and Spain, and a couple of hundred spectators and reporters gathered to hear, at long last, the Court's judgment on the Case Concerning the Barcelona Traction, Light & Power Company, Ltd. The case was the biggest as to length of time under consideration, and the second biggest as to quantity of testimony, ever heard by the Court since it had been constituted under the United ...