On the surface, the two books under review seem to have little in common. The Bonnitcha/Poulsen/Waibel (BPW) book, written by two legal academics and a political scientist, provides a balanced, fact-grounded account of international investment agreements (IIAs) and investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). This is the “international treaty regime” in that book's title which the authors argue needs to be distinguished from the broader “international regime complex” that their book explicitly does not address, namely the number of other international instruments that at least incidentally also protect foreign investments (including, for example, political risk insurance, tax treaties, certain World Trade Organization agreements, and certain human rights treaties like the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)) (p. 7 and Figure 1.2). As one of the encomiums on its back cover page suggests, the BPW book seeks to answer the fraught competing contentions of defenders and critics of the regime that all too frequently generate “more heat than light.” Their book dispassionately synthesizes the available legal, economic, and political literature relevant to understanding the investment treaty regime's oft-proclaimed “legitimacy crisis.” It seeks to supply lawyers needing political context and political scientists needing legal knowledge with the unfiltered facts required to assess whether such a “crisis” exists and, if so, what the ways forward might be.

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.

The treatment of civilian alien enemies, either in the national jurisdiction of a belligerent or in occupied territory, presents questions of public international law as well as of municipal law and administration. It appears that in some of the United Nations in the present war the problem of internment of such persons has become less acute as the tide of battle has turned against the Axis. In Great Britain, for example, the number of aliens of enemy nationality interned under the Royal Prerogative, and whose release had not been authorized, was only 6,123 at the beginning of 1944 as compared with 17,940 at the beginning of 1941.