The open-endedness of the Continental Shelf Convention renders it vulnerable to misuse as a camouflage for extravagant claims by states seeking to extend their coastal jurisdiction far out into the abyss until, perhaps, they meet in an oceanic thalweg. The definition of the continental shelf in terms of exploitability and the inclusion of “sedentary species” among the “natural resources” of the continental shelf are the two greatest sources of this indeterminacy. Their elimination from the Convention would greatly reduce its fictional elements—the false colors it now provides for grandiose ambitions. On the other hand, the comment which follows does not purport to investigate the basic choice between accepting the exclusive competence of coastal states over sedentary fisheries and general community freedom from such competence. Assuming those issues to be beyond its scope, it is limited to the pragmatic evaluation of including sedentary fisheries within the scope of the continental shelf regime or, alternatively, of restoring a modified version of the Sedentary Fisheries Article which the International Law Commission proposed in 1951.

On the docket of the United States Supreme Court in 2004 is a substantial cluster of cases at the intersection of constitutional and international law. In the previous two Supreme Court Terms, the Court had adverted to sources of law and practice outside the United States, in its treatment of constitutional claims involving the death penalty and same-sex relationships. The apparent willingness of the Court to consider international and foreign authorities in reaching its conclusions on contested issues of constitutional law has raised to new promir nence the debate over the relationship between constitutional and international law. It is not yet clear whether the new (or newly rediscovered) interest of the Court in international sources presages a long-term trend toward a more cosmopolitan constitutional jurisprudence. On the assumption that this represents more than a passing fad, advocates before the Court in die current Term—for example, in the cases involving die “enemy combatant” detainees at Guantanamo Bay—have vigorously pressed arguments concerning international and foreign law in connection with the constitutional issues at stake. The Court's acceptance of quite a few cases raising a mixture of international and constitutional questions for decision in 2004 may signal that the Court is preparing for a new era of engagement with legal developments external to the United States, or, alternatively, that it seeks to limit (or in any event to delimit) the relevance of such developments for the U.S. legal system.

Notwithstanding a letter by the Legal Adviser of the State Department suggesting that the act of state doctrine should not be applied to bar consideration of the defendant's counterclaim and set-off arising out of the expropriation of the defendant's property by the Cuban Government, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Banco National de Cuba v. First National City Bank of New York1 applied the doctrine and refused to review the merits of the counterclaim and set–off.

The fact is not very widely known that the League of Nations and governments acting in coöperation during a period of just over twenty years between the two world wars have built up an effective international drug administration spanning the entire world. It may perhaps be said that the general public has come to realize that a useful piece of work has been and is being done with good results, but only a few specialists know the main principles on which international coöperation in regard to narcotic drugs is based; and perhaps still fewer have any knowledge of the fact that to make possible effective control of narcotics it was necessary to create special international machinery with wide powers of supervision, regulation, and even sanctions. It should be mentioned at the outset that this international administration has survived the onslaught of the present world crisis which proved fatal to many other efforts in international coöperation. This signifies that the governments of countries of the free peoples of the world have maintained national control of drugs and have continued their coöperation with each other and with the League of Nations and the international drug organs. A proof of this is the fact that in January, 1943, one of these organs—the Supervisory Body—had received from governments of all the free countries in the world except one, Liberia, the estimates of the drug requirements for 1943 which governments are required to furnish under the terms of one of the drug conventions.

We are pleased to report that, on February 7, 1991, the International Court of Justice elected Judge Robert Yewdall Jennings to be its President and Judge Shigeru Oda to be its Vice-President. Both offices carry five-year terms. Given the growing role of the Court, these elections are a significant tribute to, and responsibility for, two outstanding scholars of international law. Both have published in this Journal and are Honorary Members of the Society.

When the present European war broke out and neutral rights came into the foreground of America’s anxieties, the President advised the public to study the conduct of the United States during the Civil War. That desperate struggle is inevitably the American touchstone for belligerent rights because, as Secretary of State Seward pointed out in 1863.