Stained Glass Windows, the Great Hall of Justice of the Peace Palace

Abstract

This chapter critically examines The Evolution of the Peace Ideal (1914), a series of four monumental stained glass windows inside the largest courtroom at the Peace Palace in The Hague that now houses the International Court of Justice. It uses the stained glass windows to explain three structuring beliefs held by international lawyers about international adjudication. First, the ethereal effect of the stained glass and its vivid iconography signals international adjudication as essential to the achievement of peace and thus a matter of professional faith. Second, a highly structured evolutionary narrative across the four windows depicts the idea of international adjudication as progress which serves to distinguish ‘civilized’ and ‘uncivilized’ states. Third, the windows’ historicism links international adjudication to an immemorial past, an invented tradition that obfuscates significant changes to its practice and meaning over the last century.