Many recent comments have been made with respect to the wisdom of Congress in passing the Act of September 22,1922, entitled, “ An act relative to the naturalization and citizenship of married women, ” commonly known as the Cable Act, and which granted a form of independent citizenship to women.1 Among these comments we find the phrase, “ probably accidental reasons,” and an expressed sentiment that it is “ questionable whether the majority of the women of this country really wanted the new law, ” and simi- ‘lar suggestions. It has been intimated that the law was passed solely as the result of the persuasive efforts of a minority of women.2 In many instances little cognizance has been taken of the reasons for, and the actual facts involved in, the change.

To the ever-increasing confusion of doctrine which makes up the law of sovereign immunity, the courts of the United States have added procedural complications which, though not as weighty, are nevertheless as puzzling as any of the substantive rules. Of recent years the United States Supreme Court and the lower Federal courts have often had occasion to consider the method whereby the question of immunity was raised. The result has been the evolution of a set of rules so vaguely defined in the decisions as to offer little guidance to the bench and bar, and withal of interest to the scholar who finds that these rules exist in no other judicial system.

The Australian proclamations of September 10, 1953, claiming the continental shelf adjacent to the coasts of the Commonwealth and its Territories are interesting in several respects. They depart as to form from the British practice, and so suggest that the United Kingdom drafts have been found by the advisers to the Australian Government to be inadequate; they attempt for the first time to establish a specific relationship between the shelf and sedentary fisheries; and they raise the novel and yet important question of the competence of an Administering Power to extend the boundaries of a Trust Territory. The proclamations were issued only after careful consideration of previous claims and the academic controversies they have generated, and one may conclude from the text that, since the International Law Commission reported on the subject, the concept of the continental shelf and the character of the rights asserted in respect of it have crystallized, and that a definite pattern has now been set for future development of the law.