Various changes in the organization of the Permanent Court of International Justice, particularly in the arrangements for its sessions, were envisaged in the amendments to the Statute of the Court annexed to the Protocol for the Revision of the Statute, of September 14, 1929. This protocol failed to come into force in September, 1930, as planned. While it may yet come into force, that event may be postponed for several years. It would seem to require ratification by each of the forty-five states which have ratified the Protocol of Signature of December 16, 1920, as well as ratification by the United States of America. Only thirty-five states members of the League of Nations have now (May 1, 1931) ratified the protocol of September 14, 1929, and it may prove to be a difficult task to persuade the remaining eleven states to ratify promptly. Meanwhile, it has seemed desirable that the court itself should revise its rules in the direction of some of the changes which would have been effected by the amendments to the statute.

When the time comes for the representatives of Japan to face those of China, Great Britain, Holland, Mexico and the United States across a table, to drive the best bargain they can for the continued national life of their island empire in the Pacific, one of the questions to be settled will be the control of the fisheries. Given the tremendous importance of fish in the food and economy of Japan, it will be a fundamental and vital question; and it would seem that for any thorough-going settlement the Soviet Union, with its shores on the Pacific, should be invited to participate in the discussion, if indeed by that time it has not actually gone to war with Japan. A brief review of the history of the problem may be of interest now and helpful to a better understanding later.

The task of codifying international law is so vast, the subject thus named so uncertain in nature and in limits, language so imperfect and misleading, and human reason so puny, that a person who addresses himself to the business with the intention of elaborating concrete expressions of the law finds himself with no solid foothold to start from, no certain direction to take, and no clear conviction as to how best to work. In the present attempt to study the problem of codification of international law in a few of its aspects, the writer has taken one topic only, the treaty, thinking that here we have phenomena in plenty and that discussion thereof may be a fruitful preliminary procedure. For even here, at the very outset, we are confronted with primary questions which throw us back to the very threshold as it were of the whole subject.

Professor Anthony D’Amato criticizes a long opinion of Judge Bork rejecting American jurisdiction over various foreign defendants in a tort action growing out of an attack on civilians in Israel by members of the Palestine Liberation Organization. None of the victims was American and there seems to be no connection between the United States and the incident except the temporary presence of agents of various defendants in the United States.

The Statute and Rules of the Permanent Court of International Justice are only remotely analogous to the detailed codes of civil procedure with which lawyers practising before municipal courts are familiar. The instruments governing the procedure of the Permanent Court are sketch maps rather than meticulously detailed charts for the procedural voyage. Nor is the body of tradition of international arbitral procedure sufficiently developed to furnish reliable guides in all circumstances. Of necessity, the practice of the court must develop out of the cases which come before it. The method of growth of its procedural law finds typical illustration in the question of the treatment, and, in particular of the amendment, of the conclusions of the parties.

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.

Option of nationality in its various forms played an important rôle in the international law and diplomacy of the second half of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth. The concept undoubtedly reached a peak in popularity and demand in connection with the territorial settlements arising from the first World War, only to fall into disuse in subsequent years. The heyday of the idea of option in general international law and relations in the years following 1918 also coincided with the high point of the usage of the principle in Soviet diplomatic practice. Indeed, perhaps in the diplomatic repertoire of no other nation was option of nationality as frequently resorted to in this or any other comparable period as in the Soviet treaty arrangements of 1917–1924. Option in all its various juridical expressions occupied from the very first an extremely important place in the legal and political acts of the Soviet regime in its search for a modus vivendi with Russia’s neighbors. What is more, the experience of these first years firmly established option as an active and operative principle of Soviet foreign policy, in which capacity it has remained until the very present, whereas in the rest of the international community option has but rarely been revived since World War I.