The most significant event in the field of international judicial organization during the year 1945 was the adoption of the Statute of the International Court of Justice to replace the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice. The event marks at once an end and a beginning—closing a chapter of history which records an astonishing success, it opens a promising prospect for the continuance of the international administration of justice along precisely the same lines. Upon the termination of the Statute of 1920 the Permanent Court will technically cease to exist; but its place will be filled by a new Court so closely resembling the old one that the chain of continuity need not be broken and the accumulated experience need not be lost. If from a technical point of view it must be said that the Court of the future will be a new Court, from a practical point of view it is more accurate to say that the same Court will go on under a new name and with but slight modifications of its basic Statute.

On September 28, 1945, the President of the United States issued two important proclamations and executive orders relating to the national exploitation of the resources of the continental shelf and the national regulation of contiguous fisheries. The claims therein made on behalf of the United States have important international repercussions. They also have an impact on the Constitutional question as to who, as between state and nation, controls these resources within and outside the three-mile limit.

When the representatives of the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States met at Yalta in February, 1945, the Soviet delegation raised the question of giving separate representation in the Assembly of the United Nations to the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic and to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The United States delegation agreed to support this claim at San Francisco, but reserved the right of the United States to put in a similar claim for three votes for itself and its possessions. The Soviet delegation raised no objection to the latter claim and the British delegation agreed to support both claims. No agreement was reached at the time with respect to the question of the participation of the two Soviet Republics at the San Francisco Conference itself. When the Yalta agreement was disclosed at the end of March objections were raised in different quarters against the principle of plural votes itself and very vehemently against the secrecy attached to the agreement. In order to pour some oil on the troubled waters the Government of the United States announced that the United States would not request for itself additional votes in the General Assembly. The United States delegation was directed, however, to cast the vote of the United States in favor of the admission of the Byelorussian and Ukrainian Republics and on April 27, 1945, the San Francisco Conference unanimously invited these Republics to become initial members of the United Nations. On April 30, 1945, it permitted them to take seats at the Conference immediately. The delegates of these republics at the Conference generally voted with the Soviet delegation but in a few instances their votes diverged. One might recall in that connection that while in the early days of the League of Nations the British Dominions followed quite closely the lead of the British delegation, twenty-five years later, at San Francisco, the British delegation found the Dominions sometimes among its most bitter opponents. It is quite possible that the position of the Soviet Republics might evolve along similar lines, though it might take some time.

Gaius and Charlemagne and President Truman seem to be working hand in hand across the centuries to bring about coördination of European inland waterways. Under the law of the Roman Empire such waterways, when constituting or crossing international boundaries, were free to use by all nations within the Empire. Since 1815, as we shall presently see, there have been successive organized attempts, mostly unsuccessful, to revive and apply this principle of freedom of navigation of the Roman Law on the Rhine, the Danube, and elsewhere. The United States, through President Truman, at the July–August Berlin (Potsdam) conference of the victorious allies, proposed that navigation over the internal waterways of Continental Europe be free to all nations under international control. More recently, in the latter weeks of 1945, grave obstacles and problems threaten the realization of the Truman proposal. The writer believes that if we visualize clearly the mechanism and workings of an international body vested with control of inland river navigation, we can better appraise the merits of that proposal.

At the Third Conference of the Inter-American Bar Association held in Mexico City during July–August, 1944, a sub-committee of the Committee on Post-War Problems proposed a draft resolution relative to the diplomatic protection of citizens abroad which, if ever officially accepted by the American Republics, would erase as between those countries all of the existing international law on the subject. The resolution urged, first of all, that “diplomatic protection of citizens abroad” be abolished in favor of an international protection of the rights of man.

The publication, on November 6,1945, of a series of documents embodying the terms of the armistice arrangements successively entered into between the Italian Government and the American and British Commanders in the Mediterranean area makes possible an accurate, if necessarily belated, evaluation of their form, content, and import. The text serve as an interesting and accurate record of the degree and intensity of cohesion of the coalition which Italy then faced in the field, and afford an insight into the variform problems which an armistice with a naval power inevitably raises. Because the laying down of Italian arms constituted the first concrete implementation of the concept of unconditional surrender the two armistices in which it was embodied offer an illuminating indication of the juridical form and content of “unconditional surrender” in 1943 with which the surrender instruments and orders of 1945 can be compared.