Here the last section begins: world history.

Where does the universal spirit show itself?

In art as intuition and image. In religion as feeling and representation. In philosophy as pure, free thought. In world history it shows itself as the whole spiritual actuality, inside and outside.

Why is it a court?

Before the universal spirit, everything particular has only limited worth. The family, civil society, the spirits of nations in their colorful actuality. World history shows this.

Summary: World history is the whole actuality of the universal spirit. It is a court, because before it everything particular counts only in a limited way.

Encyclopaedia §§ 553–577: Absolute Spirit (Art, Religion, Philosophy)

Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion: The Relation of the Philosophy of Religion to Philosophy and to Religion

§ 448. 3) The determinate national spirit, since it is actual and its freedom is as nature, is ultimately also within time, and has within it a development of its actuality determined by its particular principle – a history. But as a limited spirit, it passes over into universal world history, whose events represent the dialectic of the particular national spirits, the world tribunal.