Few rules for the ordering of Society have such a deep moral and religious influence as the principle of the sanctity of contracts: Pacta sunt servanda. In ancient times, this principle was developed in the Bast by the Chaldeans, the Egyptians and the Chinese in a noteworthy way. According to the view of these peoples, the national gods of each party took part in the formation of the contract. The gods were, so to speak, the guarantors of the contract and they threatened to intervene against the party guilty of a breach of contract. So it came to be that the making of a contract was bound up in solemn religious formulas and that a cult of contracts actually developed.

In his State of the Union Message on January 9, 1959, President Eisenhower declared his purpose of intensifying efforts “to the end that the rule of law may replace the rule of force in the affairs of nations” and of making proposals for “a re-examination of our own relation to the International Court of Justice.”

It is a commonplace observation that the world arena today exhibits a number of systems of public order, each demanding and embodying the values of human dignity in very different degree.

In its Judgment of March 21, 1959, on the Preliminary Objections of the United States, the International Court of Justice held, by a vote of 9 to 6, that the Swiss application of October 2, 1957, requesting the Court to decide that the United States was under an obligation to restore the vested American assets of Interhandel or to submit the dispute to arbitration or conciliation, was inadmissible because Interhandel had not yet exhausted local remedies available in the United States courts.

The thirty-seventh year of the World Court—the thirteenth year of the International Court of Justice—has been partially devoid of exciting news. Aside from the meeting for swearing the new members of the Court, and for the election of officers of the Court, there was no meeting of the Court until September 25, 1958.

There are some who say that adjudication has no role to play in the settlement of disputes over the uses of waters of international rivers. One author writes:

Since the United Nations Emergency Force moved in and occupied the heights overlooking the Straits of Tiran, the Gulf of Aqaba has been quiet. Ships, including Israel flag ships, move freely in and out. The right of passage claimed by Israel and other states was discussed in the Security Council in 1954, in the International Law Commission in 1956, in the General Assembly in 1956-57, and again at the Geneva Conference on the Law of the Sea February 24-April 27, 1958, and will be analyzed here. It should be stated at the outset that Israel's boundaries, including the strip at the northern end of the Gulf of Aqaba, are not an issue here. Nor is the Arab claim that a state of war continues to exist pertinent in determining the legal status of the Gulf and the Straits, although it obviously has some bearing on the availability to Israel of the right of “innocent” passage.

The Israeli-Soviet oil arbitration in Moscow has evoked world-wide criticism for not being up to the standards of a fair and impartial proceeding. Not only do the results of the award, dated July 3, 1958, appear to be unsatisfactory, but the award also does not sufficiently deal with the legal questions submitted to the tribunal. The latter thereby missed the opportunity of contributing to the development of an important legal aspect of international transactions, namely, the application of the force majeure clause. This note will be primarily concerned with that point, as well as with some international law aspects arising out of the arbitration.

Do states possess the right to seize evidence located within the territory of another, by forcible measures if necessary, if the object of this action is to procure the best evidence and thereby facilitate the task of an international tribunal in the decision of a dispute brought before it? In other words do states have the right to obtain discovery of evidence by intervention? This was one of the questions which the International Court of Justice was called upon to decide in the Corfu Channel Case.

The United Nations Conference on International Commercial Arbitration convened from the 20th of May until the 10th of June, 1958, at the Organization’s Headquarters in New York. Early in the general debate, the United States Eepresentative, Mr. Beale, stated that his Government was

Well over one hundred treaties which have governed or today govern water uses in international drainage basins have been entered into all over the world. These treaties, and the negotiations leading to them, indicate that there are principles limiting the power of states to use such waters without regard to injurious effects on co-riparians.

At its 681st meeting on October 25, 1957, the Fourth Committee of the General Assembly adopted a resolution which provided in part as follows:

The Fourth Committee

It is proposed in the present paper to examine the act of state doctrine enunciated in the dictum of Chief Justice Fuller in Underhill v. Hernandez that

It appears at first sight almost incredible that a secret ballot under the majority rule could result in more candidates mustering the required majority of votes than there are places to be filled. But this actually happened four times in the Security Council during the election of judges to the International Court of Justice.

The operation of public international organizations and the development of that sector of substantive international law which such organizations administer require that an effective mechanism exist for the authoritative interpretation of their basic instruments.

After the second World War Poland concluded six bilateral treaties of alliance and became party to one multilateral treaty of alliance. The bilateral treaties are treaties of friendship and mutual assistance signed with the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary and Rumania.

Since the end of the first "World War—an event widely considered to mark a turning point in the development of international law—several suggestions have been made to negotiate a multilateral treaty aimed at the protection of private foreign investment.

The present study is intended to be a modest contribution to Schlesinger’s research project concerning the “general principles of law recognized by civilized nations.” At the same time it tends to comply with the voeu recommended by Jenks to the Institut de Droit International concerning the desirability of better information on the decisions of international arbitral tribunals. It is the aim of the present study to trace all explicit or implied references to these “general principles of law recognized by civilized nations” which may be found in the hitherto published decisions of the Conciliation Commissions established under Article 83 of the Peace Treaty with Italy of February 10, 1947. These Commissions consist of one member appointed by each of the states concerned. If these two members fail to agree, they draft a “statement of disagreement,” whereupon a third member,5 citizen of a third state, is added to the Commission, which shall then decide the case concerned by a majority vote.