On the night of December 28, 1968, eight Israeli helicopters took part in an attack on the Beirut International Airport. Israeli commandos descended from six of the helicopters (the other two hovered above) that had landed either on runways or at the hangars of the airport. All commercial aircraft belonging to Arab airlines were destroyed by explosives being placed in the nose-wheel well and in the undercarriage well of each plane. The attack resulted in the destruction of 13 planes whose worth has been estimated to be $43.8 million. Additional damage has been reported done to hangars and other airport installations. Lebanese sources report that two Israeli commandos were injured by gunfire from airport guards. There was no loss of life.

In recent years, scholarly attention has increasingly focused on the lawmaking effect of General Assembly resolutions. The citation of previous resolutions in later resolutions of the General Assembly is one potentially significant aspect of this question, yet there has been no examination of it in legal literature. Anyone familiar with the Assembly’s work knows that the phenomenon is pervasive. 1,149 resolutions, just over half of the 2,247 passed in the first twenty-one sessions of the General Assembly, refer to previous resolutions, and the cited resolutions have been invoked an average of 2.68 times. More important from a legal standpoint is the fact that a very few resolutions have been cited much more often than the average. Resolution 1514 (XV) was cited in 95 subsequent resolutions in the first six sessions following its passage, and Resolution 217(111) was cited 75 times in its first nineteen years. Seven resolutions have been referred to on more than sixteen occasions since their approval by the General Assembly, and seven have been cited more than twice in each session since passage. A consideration of the legal relevance of this phenomenon seems worth pursuing, and any such inquiry must begin first of all with an over-all theoretical analysis of General Assembly resolutions as a source of international law.

Neither legal authors nor United Nations practice question the conclusion that resolutions of the General Assembly and the Security Council must conform to the U.N. Charter. Faced with a challenge to the legality of a resolution, the majority has never maintained that the acts of U.N. organs have to be complied with when they are inconsistent with the Charter. In such cases the majority has always preferred to deny that a violation of the Charter occurred, often resorting to a liberal, sometimes excessively liberal, interpretation of the provisions of the Charter.

In recent years, many nations have made claims of extended maritime jurisdiction or exclusive control for various purposes, and sometimes have claimed sovereignty over areas of sea far beyond the three-mile territorial sea traditionally claimed by many nations. A primary objective of many of these claims has been control over fishing in coastal waters, with the purpose of reserving for the exclusive use of fishermen of the coastal state the fish resources in the waters claimed, or of controlling the activities of foreign fishermen and possibly exacting fees for the privilege of continued fishing. The nature of most claims of authority to regulate the taking of fish in coastal waters is such as to exclude foreign fishermen, such claims having as their basic purpose unconditional right of exclusion. What rights exist for displaced fishermen exist as a matter of comity, i.e., friendship between friendly nations, and as such form no basis for claims of legal right to recompense (although the governments of fishermen who are expelled without a phase-out period may justifiably respond in like unfriendly manner, enacting restrictive tariffs or similar economic handicaps). Several countries have made provision in their own laws for recognition of “traditional” or “historic” fishing for foreign fishermen on a basis of reciprocity, i.e., their fishermen would have similar rights in the exclusive fisheries zone of the foreign nation whose fishermen were permitted to continue fishing. Most such laws have been very recent. The problem is not new, however. Problems of access to the North Atlantic fisheries embroiled the United States and Great Britain immediately after the Revolutionary War, and were not resolved until 1910 by action of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague. Pelagic sealing inflamed relations between the United States and other nations in the late 19th century, requiring arbitration for settlement.

In a letter dated January 27, 1969, to a local taxing authority the Legal Adviser of the Department of State responded to a request for a list of foreign governments that have negotiated reciprocal treaties with the United States that provide for exemption of consulates from payment of local real estate taxes. The Legal Adviser enclosed a list of treaty provisions in force between the United States of America and other countries relating to the exemption of government-owned property from real property taxes.