It is commonplace to say that the Court has not lived up to the expectations expressed at its creation, although it could also be said that the governments in and out of the United Nations have not lived up to those expectations. In presenting the Statute of the Court to the Fourth Commission at the United Nations Conference on International Organization, the Rapporteur of its First Committee said that the Committee “ventures to foresee a significant role for the new Court in the international relations of the future.” He went on to say: “The judicial process will have a central place in the plans of the United Nations for the settlement of international disputes by peaceful means.”

In its Judgment of February 5, 1970, in the Case Concerning the Barcelona Traction, Light and Power Company, Limited (New Application, 1962, Belgium v. Spain, Second Phase), the International Court of Justice, by a vote of 15 to 1, rejected, for lack of jus stanai, a Belgian claim of a right of diplomatic protection of alleged Belgian shareholders in a Canadian company allegedly victim of a series of denials of justice by Spanish authorities. Essentially, the Court’s decision denies the existence of any general rule of international law or of any special circumstances or considerations of equity which confer a right of diplomatic protection of national shareholders in a foreign company where the acts complained of were directed by authorities of a third state against the company rather than against any legal rights of the shareholders as such. The opinion of the Court is, for the most part, soundly reasoned and comes after thorough argument of the precedents and brilliant presentation of opposing contentions of law and fact by distinguished counsel. Attorneys may safely advise clients that the Court’s opinion sets forth the existing law and that any special protection of shareholders as such in a foreign company must be based on treaty stipulations or special agreements.

The boundary dispute between India and Pakistan in the Rann of Kutch case is one of the major instances of international arbitration in the postwar period.

The object of the ad hoc Tribunal was to determine a sector of the boundary between India and Pakistan in the southwestern region of the Indian subcontinent between what in British times was Sind, now forming part of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, and the State of Kutch and other Native Indian States, which now form part of the Province of Gujarat in the Republic of India. The length of the boundary eventually established by the Tribunal was about 255 miles. The disputed territory, the area of which has been estimated to be 3,500 square miles, consisted for the most part of a portion of a tract known as the Great Rann of Kutch, or the Rann.

The length of time which has unfortunately (owing entirely to the procrastinations and backslidings of this reviewer) elapsed since the date when this (by any standards) most original and arresting work was first published in April, 1967, makes it scarcely necessary to supply that systematic description of its contents which, up to a point, any well-ordered review ought to seek to do,—for by this time all those who are interested in its subject matter will have read or at least looked through it. We shall therefore concentrate on those salient aspects of it which, even after the familiarity of three years has softened their outlines, still seem to stand out with special prominence.