The second substantive session of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea was held at Geneva from March 26 to May 10, 1975. It was decided at the outset that this would be a negotiating session. There was no general debate. Few formal meetings were held. Even informal working groups of the whole tended to rely on smaller groups the work of which was necessarily removed from public view. Progress, in many respects substantial progress, was made toward producing generally acceptable texts in this way. However, the Conference did not complete the negotiation of a new Law of the Sea Convention or approved texts.

Will there be a timely and successful conclusion to the Law of the Sea Conference? This is the basic question governments and interested members of the public are considering as they review the results of the organizational session of the Conference at UN Headquarters in New York from December 3 to December 15, 1973, and the first substantive session in Caracas from June 20 to August 29, 1974. During this review they face ever more pressing problems arising from the strategic, economic, scientific, and environmental use and importance of the oceans and ocean resources, intensified by growing concern with international trade and with supplies and prices of food and basic raw materials.

No other issue in recent times has so troubled our relations [with Mexico]; no other problem has so taxed our determination to seek mutually satisfactory solutions to common problems; no other problem has so tested the sincerity and ingenuity of our diplomats; and no other problem has so challenged the mutual respect and goodwill that our two countries have for each other.

As the United Nations commemorates 1975 as “International Women's Year,” in a concerted effort to “promote equality between men and women“ and to “ensure the full integration of women in the total development effort,” the concern of the larger global community for outlawing sex-based discrimination is being articulated with increasing vigor. This concern both builds upon and expresses a more general norm of nondiscrimination which seeks to ban all generic differentiations among people in access to value shaping and sharing for reasons irrelevant to individual capabilities and contribution. The particular norm against sex-based discrimination finds expression in many authoritative communications, at both international and national levels, and is rapidly being defined in a way to condemn all the great historic deprivations imposed upon women as a group.

Over a quarter century after most of them arose, an agreement settling claims of the United States against Hungary was signed at Washington on March 6, 1973. Under its terms Hungary will pay a lump sum of $18,900,000 in settlement of the claims of the United States and its nationals arising out of war damage, nationalization of property, and certain financial debts. Like the Rumanian and Bulgarian lump sum agreements of 1960 and 1963, upon which it is modeled, the Hungarian Agreement constitutes a unique development in international claims practice, for it follows the “preadjudication” of most of the claims by the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission (FCSC), a U.S. national claims commission acting pursuant to Title III of the International Claims Settlement Act. Although the claims against the three former Axis satellites now have been settled internationally, other preadjudicated claims under Titles III (Soviet Union), IV (Czechoslovakia), and V (Cuba and China) of the same act still remain outstanding. The present agreement, therefore, merits analysis not only in its own right, but also for what it reveals about the technique of preadjudication and the international claims settlement process generally.

The basic objective of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea is to adopt a comprehensive Law of the Sea Convention. From the records of the long preparatory work of the Conference by the UN Seabed Committee and the discussions at both the Caracas and Geneva sessions of the Conference, it is clear that the final product will be a treaty creating new rules of international law and also updating certain traditional ones. In effect, the comprehensive Law of the Sea Convention is intended to establish a new world order in the ocean space.

In part II of his article, Destination Embargo of Arab Oil: Its Legality under International Law, Mr. Ibrahim F. I. Shihata defends the legality of the armed attack on Israel launched by many Arab states, with Soviet assistance, on October 6, 1973. “Egypt and Syria,” he writes, “as the states vested with sovereignty, but illegally deprived of actual control, over territories occupied by Israel were … entitled to seek redress for the protection of their territorial integrity. Under the UN system they were probably under the obligation to resort first to peaceful methods. This they have done in vain for more than six years. Egypt, in particular, expressed officially its readiness to enter into a peace agreement with Israel containing all the obligations provided for in Security Council Resolution 242 (1967) as broadly elaborated by the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General, Ambassador Jarring. In response, Israel defiantly insisted on territorial expansion.” Under these circumstances, he argues, both Egypt and Syria (which had never accepted any version of Security Council Resolution 242 or given any assurances to Ambassador Jarring) had an inherent right of self-help under customary international law, or of self-defense under “a broad reading” of Article 51 of the Charter, in what he asserts was no more than an attempt to recover those territories by force.

The purpose of this article is to examine the work of the First Main Committee of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea at Caracas, with particular attention to the question of the system of exploration and exploitation of the seabed beyond the limits of national jurisdiction. This is the area which the United Nations General Assembly in 1970 had characterized as constituting, together with its natural resources, the “common heritage of mankind” in the Declaration of Principles Governing the Sea-bed and the Ocean Floor, and the Subsoil Thereof, Beyond the Limits of National Jurisdiction.

In pursuing a consistent policy of peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems, proletarian internationalism, and strengthening relations with socialist and developing countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the Soviet State concludes over 400 treaties and agreements a year.

In the case concerning the legality of French atmospheric nuclear testing in the South Pacific presently before the ICJ, an issue has been raised of far-reaching implications for the general law of state responsibility for environmental damage.

The object of this article is to examine and evaluate the Fishermen's Protective Act, as reflecting the legal strategy of the United States in one particular area of its foreign relations law of importance to both the law of the sea and the law of international claims.

Despite the many dramatic developments that have occurred over the past half dozen years in relation to the production of natural resources in some areas of the third world, mineral production in most developing countries is still carried out through contractual arrangements between foreign firms and host country governments. The nationalization of the copper industry in Chile and the bauxite industry in Guyana, the spectacular successes of OPEC, and the completed or projected nationalizations of petroleum operations in a number of countries have taken center stage since 1969. Nevertheless, these developments are not typical of the vast majority of mineral arrangements in developing countries.

The “Protocol of Buenos Aires,” which revised the Charter of the Organization of American States, entered into force in 1970. It changed the legal status of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in a number of important respects and strengthened the normative character of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man. These are most significant developments, and yet they have gone largely unnoticed in the literature.

The question of voting procedure in international conferences convoked to codify international law has been discussed for more than a hundred years, starting with the first Geneva Red Cross Conference in 1864. At the Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907 important departures were made from the unanimity rule in favor of near-unanimity or quasi-unanimity. Further steps toward a two-thirds rule were taken by the League of Nations in connection with the Hague Codification Conference of 1930. The question arose anew when the first United Nations conferences were held, and in particular as soon as the United Nations started its ambitious program for the progressive development of international law and its codification, pursuant to Article 13(1) (a) of the UN Charter.

The 1974 Diplomatic Conference on the Reaffirmation and Development of International Humanitarian Law Applicable in Armed Conflicts was the first attempt by a full-fledged diplomatic conference in 25 years to create new law for the protection of victims of wars. It was also the first time in some 40 years that a diplomatic conference has taken up the question of restricting the use of conventional weapons. And it was the first time since before World War I that an international conference had looked extensively at the question of methods of attack and had weighed their impact on the civilian population.

The International Law Commission celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the opening of its first session on May 27, 1974—a little behind the historical course of events, for the first session had actually opened on April 12, 1949. As was to be expected, the occasion called forth almost a floodtide of oratory recounting the achievements of the Commission in the codification of international law.

The correct identification of Mr. Herbert Brownell, the coauthor of “The Colorado River Salinity Problem with Mexico” appearing in the April 1975 issue of the Journal at page 255, is “Formerly Attorney General of the United States, 1953”1957.”