The concept of “soft law” in international law has been familiar for some years, although its precise meaning is still debated. A distinguished international lawyer, Professor Ignaz Seidl-Hohenveldern, delivered a series of lectures on International Economic “Soft Law” at the Hague Academy of International Law in 1979. The concept as applied to economic affairs is of particular interest in relation to the subject matter of this article.

March 29, 1919

The Preliminary Peace Conference at the plenary session on the 25th January, 1919 (Minute No. 2), decided to create, for the purpose of inquiring into the responsibilties relating to the war, a commission composed of fifteen members, two to be named by each of the Great Powers (United States of America, British Empire, France, Italy and Japan) and five elected from among the Powers with special interests.

The Commission was charged to inquire into and report upon the following points:

1. 1. The responsibility of the authors of the war.

2. 2. The facts as to breaches of the laws and customs of war committed by the forces of the German Empire and their Allies, on land, on sea, and in the air during the present war.

3. 3. The degree of responsibility for these offences attaching, to particular members of the enemy forces, including members of the General Staffs, and other individuals, however highly placed.

4. 4. The constitution and procedure of a tribunal appropriate for the trial of these offences.

5. 5. Any other matters cognate or ancillary to the above which may arise in the course of the enquiry, and which the Commission finds it useful and relevant to take into consideration.

One of the more remarkable developments in international law in the mid-1990s is not what it appears to be. The massive and sudden proliferation of bilateral investment treaties (BITs), now constituting a network of more than thirteen hundred agreements involving some 160 states, appears to reflect die triumph of liberal economics in the sphere of international investment. In fact, however, it constitutes only a momentary convergence of nationalist interests. If the BITs are to construct the liberal international investment regime they seem to promise, then they must be modified in important and substantial ways.

Despite the promises made after World War II to eliminate the commission of atrocities, crimes against humanity persist with horrifying ubiquity. Yet the absence of a consistent definition and uniform interpretation of crimes against humanity has made it difficult to establish the theory underlying such crimes and to prosecute them in particular cases. In the 1990s, several ad hoc international criminal tribunals were established to respond to the commission of atrocity crimes,1 including crimes against humanity, in specific regions of the world in conflict. Building on this legacy, in 1998 a new institution—the International Criminal Court(ICC)— was established to take up the task of defining crimes against humanity and other atrocity crimes and preventing and punishing their commission.

If, as Lao-tse said, nature is not anthropomorphic, some fellow creatures nonetheless seem to share the better angels of our character; among these animals, none is grander than the African elephant. Elephants live in close-knit “families” of about ten members that seem to do just about everything synchronously—feeding, walking, resting, drinking or mud wallowing. Each unit has a matriarchal structure: it is headed by the oldest female and consists of younger females and their calves, as male calves tend to leave the family and strike out on their own when they reach sexual maturity between the ages of 10 and 15. Fighting is rare.

On October 7, 1985, the Achille Lauro, an Italian-flag cruise ship, was seized while sailing from Alexandria to Port Said. The hijackers, members of the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), a faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), had boarded the ship in Genoa, posing as tourists. They held the ship’s crew and passengers hostage, and threatened to kill the passengers unless Israel released 50 Palestinian prisoners. They also threatened to blow up the ship if a rescue mission was attempted. When their demands had not been met by the following afternoon, the hijackers shot Leon Klinghoffer, a Jew of U.S. nationality who was partly paralyzed and in a wheelchair, and threw his body and wheelchair overboard. The United States characterized the seizure as piracy, a position that has been supported by some commentators and opposed by others.

International law owes much to American judges and to American jurists. The list of those who have contributed to its advancement is not short and includes the names of Marshall, Story and Field, Kent, Wheaton, with his able commentators, Dana and Lawrence, Halleck and Lieber and, among recent writer’s, Taylor, Moore and Snow. Although his name is not connected with a general treatise on the subject of public international law, it may be doubted whether any of his fellow-workers in that field have rendered a more important service to humanity and to international good neighborhood, than has Dr. Francis Lieber in his memorable “Instructions for the Government of the Armies of the United States in the Field.”

At the 2010 Review Conference in Kampala, the states parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) decided to adopt seven amendments to the Rome Statute that contemplate the possibility of the Court exercising jurisdiction over the crime of aggression subject to certain conditions. One condition was that the exercise of jurisdiction would be “subject to a decision to be taken after 1 January 2017 by the same majority of States Parties as is required for the adoption of an amendment to the Statute,” and another was that such jurisdiction could be exercised “only with respect to crimes of aggression committed one year after the ratification or acceptance of the amendments by thirty States Parties.” As these dates approach, we—two lawyers who represented the United States at the Kampala conference and who worked many hours on the United States’ reengagement with the ICC during the Obama administration—thought it an appropriate moment to take stock of where we are, how we got here, and where we might or should be headed with respect to the crime of aggression.

The month of October, 1973, brought with it Arab coercion in two forms: the first was the military attack against Israeli forces begun on October 6 ; the second was the use of economic coercion against countries that, in Arab eyes, either supported Israel or did not support the Arabs in their present quests (which include the return of claimed “Arab” lands, favorable settlement of the Palestinian peoples' claim for self-determination, and other political and military objectives).

The law governing the admission of reservations to treaties has evolved over the past sixty years, as is demonstrated by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which incorporates a regime on reservations that represents a significant change in the law as it was generally understood in the first part of this century. Whereas it was once widely considered that the unanimous consent of the other parties to a treaty was required to admit a reservation, the Vienna Convention implemented a new system in which this condition is generally not necessary. The regime on reservations is contained in section 2 of the Convention (Articles 19-23), which, together with the definitional article (Article 2(1)(d)), determines what constitutes a reservation, the criteria it must meet to be permissible, and the effect it will have, both in the event that it is accepted by other contracting states and in the more problematic event that it is not.

The Western—or, until now, Spanish—Sahara is a small place. Its decolonization and the fortunes of its mere 75,000 inhabitants do not attract instant or prolonged public attention. Nevertheless, or, perhaps, in part for that very reason, the disposition of the Sahara case by the United Nations has been monumentally mishandled, creating a precedent with a potential for future mischief out of all proportion to the importance of the territory.

This article explores the relevance of the law of international responsibility to the practice of domestic courts. In addition to proposing analytical distinctions that allow us to systematize and differentiate domestic case law pertaining to international responsibility, the article essentially advances three arguments. First, in certain circumstances domestic courts may find that a breach of an international obligation by the forum state constitutes an internationally wrongful act. Principles of international responsibility may be applicable to such a wrong. Second, domestic courts may contribute to the implementation of the international responsibility of states by ensuring that principles of cessation and reparation are given effect. Third, international law leaves much leeway to states and their courts in applying principles of international responsibility in a specific domestic legal and factual context. The application of such principles will be colored by their interaction with domestic law and will vary among states.

Early in 1961, the President of Liberia, the Prime Minister of Nigeria, and the Prime Minister of Sierra Leone decided to act as joint sponsors of a conference of the leaders of all the independent African states for the purpose of promoting inter-African co-operation. Liberia, as the the oldest of the three sponsoring states, graciously offered to play host. The idea was that all the African states that were independent at that time were ipso facto eligible for membership of the conference. This conference would include the small group of independent African states, usually referred to as the Casablanca bloc, consisting of the United Arab Republic, Ghana, Guinea, Mali and Morocco. This group had signed the Casablanca Charter which was a brief document setting out the aims and purposes of the organization, among which were schemes of economic and social co-operation and the establishment of an African High Command for the purpose of self-defense of its members as well as for that of ridding the continent of Africa of all forms of colonialism. When, therefore, the decision was taken by the three sponsoring states to call a Pan-African conference, it was envisaged that all the then independent states in Africa, including the so-called Casablanca bloc states, would attend and take a full part in its deliberations.

It is time for a fresh look at the norm of nonintervention in domestic affairs, as applied to nonforcible efforts to influence another state’s internal politics. The existence of such a norm is widely proclaimed, and it is commonly assumed to be a legal obligation rather than a mere practice of comity or aspirational objective. For governments, scholars and international organs alike, the “rule” against interference in internal politics seems to be an article of faith; but despite the frequency of its incantation in international discourse, how the norm applies to nonforcible conduct is inadequately understood.

Historically, public international law and private international law have been treated as two different legal systems that function more or less independently. Public international law regulates activity among human beings operating in groups called, nation-states, while private international law regulates the activities of smaller subgroups or of individuals as they interact with each other. Since the public international legal system coordinates the interaction of collective human interests through decentralized mechanisms and private international law coordinates the interaction of individual or subgroup interests primarily through centralized mechanisms, these coordinating functions are usually carried out in different forums, each appropriate to the task. The differences between the processes by which sanctions for violation of community norms are applied in the two systems and the differences in the nature of the units making up the communities that establish those norms tend to obscure the fact that both the public and the private international systems coordinate human behavior, and that thus the values that inform both systems must necessarily be the same.

Ever since the principle of self-determination entered the lexicon of international politics during World War I, American foreign policymakers have had to contend with problems revolving around that concept. The need to favor one or another claimant, each waving the banner of self-determination and invoking the “right to determine its own fate,” continues to present dilemmas, often extremely troubling ones, for U.S. decisionmakers. Examples from recent history come readily to mind. The entire post-World War II decolonization process entailed an endless series of such dilemmas, and even after formal decolonization was all but completed, such nagging issues as Katanga, Biafra, and Eritrea remained, not to mention the problems of South Africa, Northern Ireland, the Middle East, and Indochina. Indeed, even within America’s own imperial domain, the United States was faced with the conflicting demands of the Puerto Rican nationalists and the majority of the Puerto Rican electorate, the claims of the Marianas as against those of Micronesia as a whole, and demands for cultural autonomy on the part of diverse ethnic groups.