This research paper discusses the International Law Commission (ILC or Commission) of the General Assembly (GA) of the United Nations (UN). This overview will focus on its mission, historical origins, composition and membership, functions, standards and accomplishments. During its first decade and a half, ILC made significant contributions to the codification of existing international law and to its progressive development. Since roughly the early 1960s, it has continued its important codification work, but has contributed little of significance to the development of international law in areas of concern to the international community. This relative decline in the effectiveness of ILC is due to changes in the makeup and political agenda of GA and its Sixth Committee which provides oversight over ILC and external funding and staffing constraints but also to internal deficiencies of ILC itself, including its reluctance to expand the scope of its activities and to modernize some of its working methods and procedures.
Article 13, para. 1a. of the UN Charter provides: "The General Assembly shall initiate studies and make recommendations for the purpose of . . . promoting international cooperation in the political field and encourage the progressive development of international law and its codification." ILC was created by GA Resolution 174 (II) on November 21, 1947. Its first members were selected on November 3, 1948 and it held its first working session on April 12, 1949. Its mission, as described in Article 15 of the Statute of the International Law Commission was: (1) "the more precise formalization and systematization of rules of international law in fields where there already has been extensive State practice, precedent and doctrine;" and (2) "the progressive development of new international law," which Article 15 defined as "the preparation of draft convention on subjects which have not yet been regulated by international law o...