The Permanent Court played a vital role in the emergence of the law of international organizations. Existing accounts of this development focus on the Court’s conception of organizations. This paper argues that this interpretation underappreciates the controversy regarding the performance of the Permanent Court’s judicial function and its place within the inter-war institutional order. Crucially, it is claimed that initially the Permanent Court adopted the perspective of an authoritative interpreter, limiting the scope for recognising the autonomy of organizations. However, the Court began to adopt a more restrained conception of its judicial function and recognised that international organizations possessed a form of compétence de la compétence. This recognition paved the way for a ‘law of international organizations’ to emerge, but, crucially, was not based on any revised understanding of what it meant to ‘be’ an international organization, but rather, on what it meant to ‘be’ an international court.

常设法院在国际组织法的出现中发挥了至关重要的作用。对这一发展的现有说明侧重于法院的组织概念。本文认为，这种解释低估了常设法院司法职能的履行及其在两次世界大战间制度秩序中的地位的争议。至关重要的是，据称常设法院最初采用权威解释的观点，限制了承认组织自治的范围。然而，法院开始对其司法职能采取更加克制的概念，并承认国际组织拥有某种形式的职权。这一承认为“国际组织法”的出现铺平了道路，但至关重要的是，