Page "Permanent Court of International Justice" Paragraph 21

After receiving files in a case calculated to lead to a judgment, the judges would exchange their views informally on the salient legal points of the case, and a time limit for producing a judgment would then be set.

Following this, each judge would write an anonymous summary containing his opinion ; these would be circulated among the Court for 2 or 3 days before the President drafted a judgment containing a summary of those submitted by individual judges.

The Court would then agree on the decision that they wished to reach, along with the main points of argument they wished to use.

Once this was done, a Committee of 4, including the President, the Registrar and two judges elected by secret ballot, drafted a final judgment, which was then voted on by the entire Court.

Once a final judgment was set, it was given to the public and the press.

Every judgment contained the reasons behind the decision and the judges assenting ; if there was a dissenting judge, he was allowed to deliver his own judgment, with all judgments read in open court before the agents of the parties to the dispute.

Judgments could only be revised based on the discovery of some fact which was unknown when the Court sat, but not if the fact was known but not discussed due to negligence.