This Note summarizes the judicial work of the International Court of Justice during 1997, using the updated General List, pleadings filed, Orders and Judgments given and hearings held at the Peace Palace in The Hague to describe the Court’s current record.

The section of the Constitution dealing with the treaty-making power was the result of extended discussion and consideration. In the so-called Virginia Plan presented on May 29, 1787, by Edmund Randolph, there is no mention of the subject of treaties, the inference being that he assumed that Congress, as the treaty-making power under the Confederation, would continue to exercise the same powers under the Constitution.

The field of international law in general is sharply demarked from that of municipal law, but it is the individuals, composing the population of the various states and nations, who furnish the points of contact where international friction may be generated. With the claims of a citizen or subject against his own government, and its officers and agencies, international law naturally has nothing to do. But when an individual asserts a claim against a government not his own, or against the individuals who carry on its operations, such a claim falls on one side or the other of the boundary between international law and municipal law, according to whether the claimant has or has not an adequate remedy in the ordinary courts of the state against which the claim exists.

The relations existing in the various states of the world, and particularly in the various states of Europe and America, between international law and municipal law, or, as it might better be called, national law, have been made the subject of several studies in recent years. In view of the probable necessity for many years yet to come of relying for the development and application of international law upon national legislatures, courts, and executive or administrative officials, in the absence of any adequate system of international legislatures, courts, and executive officials, this borderland between international law and national law deserves the most thorough attention. But the attention given to the way in which international law is enforced by national courts, the way in which international treaties are supplemented by national statutes, and to other similar phases of the general subject, has led to some neglect of the central question in the problem, or, at least, has not afforded an adequate answer to that question. It is the purpose of this paper to state this question as it has arisen in cases tried in American courts, to attempt to find the proper solution for it, and to compare that solution with ruling case law on the point in the United States.

A congressional inquiry to the Department of State concerned the practice of signing documents such as the Trilateral Statement concluded at Moscow on January 14, 1994, by President William J. Clinton, Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin, and Ukraine President Leonid M. Kravchuk and the status of such documents under both United States and international law and practice.

The shaping of agreements which are to impose new obligations upon states requires regard for political experience as well as high technical skill. The record of past effort seems to show that this is particularly true of treaties for pacific settlement. Among the problems incident to the construction of treaties for the arbitral settlement of future disputes, perhaps none is more central than that of the form in which the right actually to initiate arbitral proceedings is set forth. It is obvious that academic schemes which would disregard the dignity of public entities and suddenly abolish the distinction between states and individuals as parties litigant, leave much to be desired. On the other hand, the object of a treaty may be defeated by subtle preservatives of the full freedom of ction by the parties, or by what has been called a “misguided passion for juristic definition” on the part of draftsmen. It has long been recognized that unless the part of a general agreement covering the method of referring disputes is adequate, a strict construction of the instrument may leave it little more than the expression of a noble wish. Evasion or frank disregard may easily follow.