The steady decline during the last half-century in the degree of effective control wielded by China over the borderlands of her great empire has been accompanied by widespread confusion concerning the international position of these areas. Obscured through the establishment by foreign nations of numerous special concessions, spheres of influence, and protectorates, the exact legal relationship existing between the central authority of China and the governors of these territories has been a cause for frequent and vigorous debate. Those groups which have sought to advance the claims of their governments to wider concessions in these regions, and those publicists who have made unsubstantiated statements about the imperialistic aims of various states in these areas, have profited by this confusion. This condition of uncertainty regarding legal status, which exists in some degree with regard to each of the four Chinese dependencies, is markedly present in the case of Outer Mongolia, a region of growing importance in Far Eastern affairs.

“We await a jurist with the mastery of the legal materials, the philosophical vision, and the juristic faith which enabled Grotius to set up a law of nations almost at one stroke,” declared Dean Pound in concluding his address before the Thirty-Third Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law on “The Idea of Law in International Relations.” That is a statement which challenges the attention and arouses the curiosity of a present-day international lawyer. Although accustomed as such a lawyer is to the notion of Grotius as the founder and father of the law of nations, it is a little startling to be told that the answer to the current dilemma of international law is contingent upon the advent of a jurist with his accomplishments. What is there in his De Jure Belli ac Pads to warrant such confidence? What would he have to offer as a guide to a lawyer seeking to extend and to reenforce the domain of law in international relations?

“Secrecy of the deliberation,” a term of art used widely in court procedure, is neither a universal principle nor one with a single meaning. Continuing an old Germanic tradition, courts in some Swiss cantons, as well as the Federal Court in Lausanne, deliberate in the presence of the parties. In most of the Western world, including the common law countries, Latin mAmerica, and Scandinavia, the principle of secret deliberations is accepted but does not cover the vote, that is, the position taken byeach judge. In all six Common Market states, however, the vote is secret and the individual judge is under an obligation not to reveal his position. Originally adopted under the regime of absolute government to protect the independence of the judge, this extended secrecy has come under attack recently, especially when applied to constitutional litigation. Legislation enacted in the German Federal Republic in December, 1970, giving members ofthe Federal Constitutional Court the right to reveal their vote, may be the precursor of changes in this matter.

The enduring value of Chief Justice John Marshall’s contributions to international law is shown by the fact that during the bicentennial year of his birth the Supreme Court of the United States has had occasion in the course of current litigation to apply principles set forth in well-known decisions rendered by Marshall more than a century ago. Likewise there is timeliness, in view of current interest in “treaty law,” in Marshall’s pronouncements on that topic.

In a notice issued by David P. Stewart, Administrator for Iranian Claims, under date of June 24, 1983, the Department of State informed claimants before the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal at The Hague of recent developments at the Tribunal with specific regard to settlement of claims. The notice read in part:

On two recent occasions, the Tribunal had refused to certify as Tribunal awards settlements submitted by U.S. claimants and Iran. In one case the amount of the proposed settlement significantly exceeded the amount of the claim. In the other, the settlement was in the full amount of the claim plus interest, but the settlement required that, after the settlement had been paid from the Security Account at the N.V. Settlement Bank of Netherlands, more than half of the amount of the settlement would be paid to Iran for taxes allegedly owed. The U.S. claimant had previously denied that any such taxes were owed. The United States—and, to the best of the Department of State’s knowledge, all U.S. claimants—has consistently denied that Iranian counterclaims for taxes are within the Tribunal’s jurisdiction.

The relationship between treaties and municipal law has been widely discussed in this country in recent years. The discussion, however, has been limited to the problems raised by the proposed Constitutional amendments. Thus, the possibility of a conflict between the Constitution and a treaty, or between a treaty and State law, has been debated, while the possibility of a conflict between a treaty and a Federal statute has been hardly ever mentioned.

The United States intervention in Haiti concludes another chapter in the development of the constitutional common law of presidential power. The Haiti experience further confirms the constitutional authority of the President to deploy armed forces into hostile foreign environments, and to initiate the use of force without prior, specific congressional authorization. The facts of the situation limit the “precedent” to small-scale interventions where the risk of major military engagements, either initially or upon escalation, is negligible. The cases of largescale hostilities, like Korea, Vietnam and Iraq, are quite different in fact and perhaps also in law. But the Haiti “precedent,” coupled with the recent interventions in Grenada and Panama and innumerable examples earlier in history, strongly supports an unqualified presidential power to carry out small-scale military operations in support of foreign policy goals.

Had the Second Hague Conference done nothing more than adopt the convention for the establishment of an International Prize Court, it would have sufficiently justified its being called together and refuted the criticisms of those who, because it did not accomplish all its most enthusiastic supporters desired, have sought to belittle its results.