The charges that air carriers pay for the use of airports and airways to provide international air service have become a source of recurrent and heated controversy between governments. This controversy largely stems from the rapid rise in user charges over the last decade, but it has been fed by the lack of uniformity practiced by some countries in levying these charges. Thus, the relatively specialized issue of user charges involves some important general concerns of international law, such as international economic cooperation (in the matter of arriving at general agreement on what constitutes reasonable charges), discrimination, and most-favorednation treatment.

This essay draws upon the perspectives, concepts, and tools developed in the literature on global constitutionalism as support for “normalizing” foreign relations law—that is, presumptively subjecting foreign relations actions to the constitutional and other legal standards that apply to domestic actions.

There can be no doubt that the principle of self-determination is applicable to the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. The UN Charter applies it. The United States as administering authority under its 1947 trusteeship agreement with the Security Council has explicitly and repeatedly recognized its applicability. The real question is precisely what elements of the principle are applicable, how they are to be applied, and within what framework.

International law is going through a period of change and, potentially, expansion. At a point in history during the past millennium, the main sources of inter-State law were custom and general principles of law recognized by civilized nations. This came to an end with the Westphalian era when an international order slowly began to establish and a treaty system was developed. Thus, such international law sources as custom and general principles of law gave way to an era of treaties: carefully designed instruments at the international level that codified every single aspect of agreements and transactions between nations. This phenomenon was not exclusive to the universal level; it also took place at a regional scale during the twentieth century, which saw the emergence of regional organizations and agreements that would enable the development of a reasonably stable international or regional society.

Scholars have argued that Senate-approved treaties are becoming increasingly irrelevant in the United States, because their role can be fulfilled by their close but less politically costly cousin, the congressional-executive agreement. This study demonstrates that treaties are more durable than congressional-executive agreements, supporting the view that there are qualitative differences between the two instruments. Abandoning the treaty may therefore lead to unintended consequences by decreasing the tools that the executive has available to design optimal agreements.