When different races of people, possessed of different religions, moral standards and civilizations, come into contact a certain amount of friction will inevitably result. This is well illustrated by the sometimes troublous experience of western traders and missionaries in China. The part of our own diplomatic correspondence concerned with the protection of Americans in that country is voluminous and full of interest, and illustrates our distinctive diplomacy in the Far East.

For some years it has been the fashion of certain coöperative groups and their organs, here and abroad, to dub as “ isolationists” all persons in theUnited States who were unable impulsively to accept certain plans and modesof action, by no means so untried as their proponents assumed them to be, as the instrumentalities of a new and peaceful world order. But, as Grotius sagely observes, it is easy to push things too far, and, by losing sight of what is fundamental, to go to extremes and assume untenable positions. In this way those who would, in the speed of their desire, leave others behind, may perchance find themselves in a state of isolation, with injury to the cause which all may wish to serve. In the present instance, the cause I particularly have in mind is that of international law.

EC—Seal Products raises an important issue in World Trade Organization (WTO) law: How can WTO trea-ties be interpreted to accommodate divergent legitimate purposes of a domestic regulation? The European Union (EU) measure at issue is a ban on the placing of seal products on the EU market, coupled with excep-tions3 for seal products produced by Inuit and other indigenous communities (IC exception), and for seal products obtained from seals hunted for the purpose of marine resource management and sold on a nonprofit basis (MRM exception). The seal ban was imposed out of the public concern over the cruel manner in which seals are hunted and killed, whereas the IC exception was made to protect the traditional lifestyle of indigenous peoples and the MRM exception accommodated theneed for sustainable management of marine resources. The EU regulation, therefore, was designed to achieve divergent policy objectives. The exceptions derogate from the ban because they permit hunting and killing of seals which can cause the very pain andsuffering for seals that concerns the EU public.

Party “intent” is not one of the tools that the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) gives to treaty interpreters. To be sure, party intent is presumably reflected in the “object and purpose” of the treaty, but it is not a separate criterion; in fact, the VCLT implicitly excludes party intent from playing an interpretive role. Yet many decision-makers, counsel, and academics persistently look to party intent for guidance when interpreting treaties. The most favored nation (MFN) debate illustrates why party intent endures as an interpretive touchstone: treaty language, even when analyzed in context and in light of the convention's object and purpose, does not always lead to clear answers. Both Simon Batifort and J. Benton Heath and Stephan Schill, in their different ways, depart from traditional VCLT analysis and hark to party intent as a reason to endorse a modified approach to treaty interpretation. Yet they also illustrate why party intent is an imperfect tool: party intent is too malleable to be a conclusive guide to treaty meaning.

As treaties decline, customary international law can be an important mechanism of international cooperation over the medium term. There are increasingly fewer treaties ratified by the United States, with a record-low number of five in 2009–2012, and fewer multilateral treaties adopted worldwide. Yet, the demand for global rules and standards has not abated. Thus, for many international questions where treaties are not available as a source of new rules, customary international law may serve as an interchangeable instrument of national policy.

The idea of a league of nations is one with which the United States has been familiar since the very beginning of its history. The form in which it first appeared to this country was in the Armed Neutrality of 1780. The purpose of this league, which has sometimes been called the League of Neutrals, was the protection of neutral trade. Having its origin at the court of Catherine II, Empress of Russia, the Armed Neutrality set forth a body of rules respecting the freedom of commerce in time of war which must prove highly favorable to the United States when that country, in a future conflict, should change its status from that of a belligerent to that of a neutral. It is not surprising, therefore, that the inclusion of the United States among the membership of the league which the Tsarina was forming to enforce these principles was not without its advocates.

In the Notes and Comments section of the January 1991 issue of the Journal, Professor Richard Lillich presented a thorough and timely analysis of the Soering decision of the European Court of Human Rights, a significant addition to international human rights law. His evaluation of the Soering judgment and his reflections on several of its wider ramifications are especially relevant to the United States military, for the decision constitutes a serious threat to the administration of U.S. military justice overseas and to the treaty relationships between the United States and its NATO allies. A recent European case, Short v. Kingdom of the Netherlands, demonstrates that this threat is far from hypothetical.

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.