However deep and acrimonious are most contemporary political controversies, the merits of the federal system of government are recognized by adherents of widely different political doctrines and practices. In the most different conditions federalism has established itself as a useful principle for welding together into one political body groups and regions of great diversity. Neither geography nor linguistic, racial or religious differences have proved insurmountable obstacles to political unity. The federal system of government, in dividing powers between one central government and a number of local governments, allows for that diversity in unity which is so attractive a goal for human activities.

On December 18, 1951, the International Court of Justice at The Hague rendered its judgment in the Fisheries Case between the United Kingdom and Norway. By ten votes to two the International Court declared “that the method employed for the delimitation of the fisheries zone by the Royal Norwegian Decree of July 12, 1935 is not contrary to international law.”

The Diplomatic Conference for the Establishment of International Conventions for the Protection of War Victims was convened by the Swiss Government and met at Geneva from April 21 to August 12, 1949. Sixty-three governments were represented at the Conference, fifty-nine of whom had full voting powers, while the remaining four attended as observers.

The International Court of Justice had a busy year in 1951. It handed down judgments in the Haya de la Torre Case and the Anglo-Norwegian Fisheries Case, and an advisory opinion relating to Reservations to the Genocide Convention. An order indicating interim measures of protection was issued in the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company Case, and orders were given in the case concerning Rights of American Nationals in Morocco and in the Ambatielos Case; these three cases, as well as two newly-instituted cases—the Minquiers and Ecrehos Case and the Nottebohm Case, were pending at the end of the year.

It can be argued that with regard to the paramount problem of the twentieth century, the establishment of effective international institutions for the achievement of peace and justice, the development of perhaps the most far-reaching significance has occurred in the judicial field.

Among the solutions to the highly controversial issue of the standing of the individual in international law is the theory that the individual is not a subject, but an object, of this law. This solution, moreover, represents the currently dominant doctrinal conception of the position of men in this law. For ever since its formulation in 1896 this theory has been expressly or tacitly accepted by nearly all of those jurists who may be collectively designated as the subjective positivist school of international law, and these jurists have ever since that time predominated in the science of this law. Nevertheless, the validity of this theory has also been questioned seriously.

The Far Eastern Agreement signed at Yalta at the very end of the Conference on February 11,1945, was frequently defended and criticized at the hearings held in April–May, 1951, on General MacArthur’s dismissal. Yet its legal status has not yet been adequately discussed.

For several generations past international lawyers have discussed the problem whether recognition of states, governments and belligerency is a matter of law or of policy. They have been unable to reach uniform conclusions. Some of them, like Professor Lauterpacht in his book on recognition, have advocated the view that there is a right to recognition and a duty to recognize.

In any legal system there is an order of rank of types of law. This order in countries where courts are independent of other branches of government, where there is both a “separation of powers” and a “rule of law,” is established and maintained by the courts through their decisions. As “interpreters” of the constitution, written or customary, the courts are really the artisans of this standard of rank, for it is rarely stated explicitly in constitutional documents.

The Committee on International Criminal Jurisdiction appointed by the General Assembly of the United Nations met in Geneva in August, 1951. Its report, accompanied by a Draft Statute for an International Criminal Court, has been submitted to the, governments of Member States for comment before June 1, 1952.

Recent press and Congressional discussion regarding the question of French taxation of property in France owned by the United States Government and used for mutual defense purposes suggests the desirability of considering whether international law forbids a state to impose taxes on public property owned by another state.