Max Witzemann had been sentenced to a prison term for counterfeiting in 1982. According to that nonappealable decision, he had imported counterfeit U.S. dollar notes into Germany in 1981. On the basis of the decision, the Hauptzollamt sought to collect customs duties and turnover taxes on the import of the forged notes. Witzemann refused to pay, pleading that the collection of customs duties and import turnover taxes violated Articles 9 and 12-29 of the EEC Treaty, which concern the customs union.

On March 3,1997, President William J. Clinton transmitted to the Senate for its advice and consent to ratification as a treaty the Agreement Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of Hong Kong for the Surrender of Fugitive Offenders, signed at Hong Kong on December 20,1996. In his letter of transmittal, President Clinton pointed out that, upon its entry into force, the Agreement would “enhance cooperation between the law enforcement communities of the United States and Hong Kong, and … provide a framework and basic protections for extraditions after the reversion of Hong Kong to the sovereignty of the People’s Republic of China on July 1, 1997.” The President continued:

The Dumbarton Oaks proposals of October 7, 1944, reflect a development of ideas concerning international political and judicial organization in which the Section of International and Comparative Law of the American Bar Association has played a significant part. Its recommendations calling for the establishment of an international organization, including an improved system for settling justiciable disputes, have found their way into resolutions of the Association, composed of some thirty thousand lawyers. These resolutions preceded the joint projects of the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and China for an international organization for the maintenance of peace and security.

On May 18, 1899, die first Hague Peace Conference was convened in the House in the Woods provided by the Dutch royal family. It was attended by invitation by representatives of twenty-six of the fifty-nine governments that then claimed sovereignty. The hundred delegates included diplomats, statesmen (no stateswomen!), publicists, lawyers, and technical and scientific experts. Unlike earlier peace conferences, which were convened to terminate ongoing armed conflicts, the Hague Conference met in peacetime for the purpose of making law. The conference was called at the initiative of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia with the intentions principally to seek agreements to limit armaments and their consequent financial burdens, and secondarily to improve the prospects for the peaceful setdement of international disputes and to codify the laws of war. Doubtiess, the tsar’s initiative was inspired in part by his grandfather’s earlier success in obtaining the St. Petersburg Declaration of 1868, which prohibited, for humanitarian reasons, the use of explosive projectiles weighing less than four hundred grams. In any event, the Hague Peace Conference pursued a much broader agenda than the meetings at St. Petersburg and was able to draw upon certain preparatory work on the laws of war, including the Geneva Convention on the Amelioration of the Conditions of the Wounded in Armies in the Field of 1864, the draft Project of an International Declaration concerning the Laws and Customs of War produced by the Brussels Conference of 1874, and the Oxford Manual on the laws of war of 1880, which had been adopted unanimously by the Institute of International Law.