With nationality problems continuing to occupy a prominent place in both international and municipal practice, expressions of opinion of our highest tribunal upon the subject are received with peculiar interest. This is particularly true where the rule announced is one which governs the validity of naturalization judgments. In a recent sweeping naturalization decision which upholds the government’s views at every point, the United States Supreme Court has again stressed the rule that when doubt exists concerning a grant of citizenship, the statutes must be strictly construed in favor of the United States and against the alien. On October 22, 1928, the court handed down its opinion in the case of Anna Marie Maney, Petitioner, v. The United States of America, in which it affirmed, on writ of certiorari, the judgment of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. The latter court had directed the cancellation of the applicant’s certificate of naturalization as having been “illegally procured” because of her failure to file, at the prescribed time and in the required manner, the certificate of her arrival in the United States.

In a series of articles in this Journal, Professor Robert Wilson drew attention to the incorporation of references to international law in United States statutes, a technique designed to allow recourse to international law by the courts in interpreting and implementing those statutes, and, consequently, to help ensure conformity between international and U.S. law. The purpose of this article is to survey the references, direct and indirect, to international law in the 20th-century statutes of two Commonwealth countries in order to see to what extent similar techniques have been adopted. The choice of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth of Australia as the subjects of this survey is no doubt somewhat arbitrary (although passing reference will be made to the legislation of Canada and New Zealand). But the United Kingdom, a semi-unitary state whose involvement in international relations has been substantial throughout the century, and the Commonwealth of Australia, a federal polity with substantial legislative power over foreign affairs and defense -whose international role has changed markedly since 1901, do provide useful examples of states with constitutional and legislative continuity since 1901, and (as will be seen) considerable legislative involvement in this field.

The adoption of the “Comprehensive Programme for the Further Extension and Improvement of Cooperation and the Development of Socialist Economic Integration by the CMEA Member-Countries,” to quote the document’s full title, opens a new chapter in the history of the self-styled “Socialist Commonwealth.” Two years on the drawing board, the 25,000-word encyclical is a strange mixture of ideological clichés, abstract formulations of political, economic, and juridical desiderata, projections of distant ends, references to proximate objectives, and elaborations of the concrete ways and means by which the next plateau on the road to the Communist millenium shall be reached. Approved at the 26th session of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) which met July 27-29, 1971, and subsequently ratified by the top political organs of the member states, the program enjoys locally the formal status of a multilateral treaty whose principles validly bind the CMEA partners to a general code of conduct aimed at achieving certain select goals by various designated methods. At the same time it represents a theoretical blueprint of how the leaderships of the countries concerned would like the region’s economic organism to perform in an optimal setting and how they propose to bring that situation about.

Since the outbreak of the Great War in the summer of 1914 the conviction has deepened that whatever may have been the conflict of interests between the nations of Europe due to their efforts to maintain or increase their political influence and territorial extent, this calamitous struggle would not have been precipitated, and certainly England and the United States would not have felt forced to become parties to it, had there not existed in Germany a controlling political philosophy which marked her off from other States and made her a menace to the rest of humanity. It is true that the proximate cause that brought Great Britain into the war was the invasion of Belgium by the German army, which jeopardized her own security from invasion; and it is equally true that it was the disregard by Germany of our own commercial rights as a neutral nation that was the immediate cause of our own declaration of war. But back of these proximate or immediate causes was a real efficient cause which impelled both Great Britain and the United States to enter the contest and to pledge to its successful prosecution their entire manhood and material resources.

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.

On two occasions in the recent past, the International Court of Justice has misstated its own prior holdings by selective quotation. In each instance, the partial quotation was invoked as authority for the opposite of what the previous Court had said. Neither matter was de minimis: in each instance, the issue for which authority was being sought was central either to the case at bar or to an important aspect of the Court’s role. The consequences for the future of international adjudication and the stability of authoritative expectation, which is such an important strut of international law, are serious and merit examination.