To write of Philip Jessup means to survey the history of the teaching of international law in the United States throughout the last half century; to cover all important events concerning the birth of international organizations on the morrow of the Second World War; to visit the halls of the General Assembly and the Security Council; to attend meetings of the American Society of International Law and the Institute of International Law, where he so frequently took the floor to shed light on their debates; to attend sittings of the International Court of Justice in the years 1960-1969. I could hardly undertake this task; there are others much more qualified to do so. What I wish to do is to recall him as a great jurist I knew and a delightful human being; in short, a judge and a great friend whom I learned to admire.

After seventy-two days of NATO's air campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia-Montenegro) (FRY), FRYPresident Slobodan Milošević on June 3, 1999 accepted an international peace proposal to end the conflict concerning Kosovo. The proposal was developed in Bonn after lengthy discussions between U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, EU envoy (and Finnish President) Martti Ahtisaari, and Russian envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin, and then presented to President Milosevic by President Ahtisaari and Mr. Chernomyrdin. Although it contained several elements previously unacceptable to the FRY, Mr. Milošević accepted the proposal due to a relentless bombing campaign against FRY tanks, artillery, and ground forces in Kosovo, as well as the destruction of oil refineries, bridges, and power stations elsewhere in Serbia; a resurgence of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) as a ground force; and the decision of Russia to find common ground with NATO prior to a regular meeting in early June of the seven leading industrial countries (Group of Seven or “G-7”) and Russia.

The purpose of this study is the narration in detail of the responsible suggestions and action that resulted in erecting the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague and in bringing into the realm of “practical” statesmanship the Court of Arbitral Justice, designed as a genuine tribunal instead merely of a panel of judges. The origin of these courts, which, even as they exist, are the greatest achievements in the institutionalizing of international law, is important because in some degree it demonstrates the processes by which international law grows and it registers to some extent the state of its legislative development. Everybody knows that you cannot bring a code of international law into effect by the process of introducing a bill in any legislature, but beyond that there is no agreement or even any very clear conception as to the processes of securing international institutions. A study of the origins of the two Hague courts of general jurisdiction furnishes some clue to the existing processes, and is the more interesting because most “practical” people denied their possibility so long as the constituent conventions were not actually in existence. The origins of these two courts, in so far as they reveal a principle, point to the conclusion that the idealism of the world can be wrought into effective machinery when the trained publicist takes hold of it and works it into forms harmonizing with existent conditions.

Despite the passage of several statutory deadlines, by February 2018 the Trump administration had imposed no Russia-related sanctions pursuant to certain provisions of the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), suggesting at one point that the threat of sanctions alone would be sufficient to deter further malfeasance. Then, on March 15, 2018, more than five months after the passage of an initial statutory deadline, the Trump administration announced that it would impose sanctions on five entities and nineteen individuals for their involvement in “malign” cyber activities on behalf of the Russian government.

The International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and Rwanda (ICTR) established a number of precedents in international criminal law, as detailed by Darryl Robinson and Gillian MacNeil.1 They also set the template for the International Criminal Court (ICC) and other tribunals as to how politics can both empower and constrain international prosecution and determine its potential contribution to peace.The lesson of the ICTY is that international criminal law can assist peace processes in an ongoing way if powerful states and international institutions complement it with coercive political strategies to weaken regimes or militias led by criminal spoilers to the point where their cooperation is not needed tonegotiate and maintain a peace settlement.The lesson of the ICTR is that the impact of international criminal law on consolidating peace is dependent upon the political agenda of the state on whose territory the crimes oc-curred and whose cooperation is needed for effective prosecution.Therefore, the contribution of prosecution to peace depends on whether the law is embedded in national and international political com-mitments that go beyond compliance with formal legal obligations and over which a tribunal has limited influence.

Could Turkey dam the Tigris and Euphrates and deprive its downstream neighbors of vital water resources? Could Brazil over-pump the Guarani Aquifer System to the detriment of the other aquifer states? Could Egypt put pressure on upstream Nile states and prevent them from developing river related infrastructure that might limit downstream flow? International law in the field of transboundary water cooperation has evolved and would appear to condemn unilateral practices such as the ones suggested above. However, hydro politics and the lack of reception of international water law instruments by many countries sometimes make it difficult to see international law properly reflected in the management of major rivers, lakes and aquifers around the world. In this essay, I first highlight what international law dictates when it comes to the tension between national sovereignty and transboundary water cooperation. I then explore how this tension plays out in the three examples noted above. Due to limited acceptance of the existing international, bilateral, or regional legal instruments, the resolution of the tension between national sovereignty and transboundary water cooperation will often be left to customary international law.