The thirty-sixth year of the World Court—the twelfth year of the International Court of Justice—has been marked by an apparent tendency to increase the use of the Court. This is a good augury for the Court.

The General Assembly of the United Nations, by its Eesolution 1105 (XI) adopted on February 21, 1957, called for a conference of its members to “examine the law of the sea, taking account not only of the legal but also of the technical, biological, economic and political aspects of the program, and to embody the results of its work in one or more international conventions or such other instruments as it may deem appropriate.”

The conquest of space has barely begun. Yet the law of space, instead of lagging behind the astronauts as some lawyers fear, is threatening to outfly the attraction of the earth’s gravity. Before legal speculation reaches escape velocity, we should perhaps remind ourselves of the specific problems that may confront us soon, the earthly origin of much of our law, and the earthly ways in which for some time we shall have to continue to think about law in outer space.

The establishment of the United Nations Emergency Force (UNBF) during the Middle Eastern crisis in November, 1957, has been generally accepted as being a proper exercise of the powers of the United Nations. Proposals have been made, however, to establish a more permanent force, either on a full-time or stand-by basis, for use in future emergencies.

The United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea met at Geneva, Switzerland, from February 24 to April 27, 1958, with representatives of 86 countries present. The Conference, it will be recalled, was convoked by the Secretary General of the United Nations pursuant to Resolution 1105 (XI) adopted by the General Assembly on February 21, 1957.

The confusion engendered by lack of clarity in fundamental conceptions such as “war,” “peace,” and “law” begins with, and is perhaps most clearly exhibited in, the traditional discussion of the many and disparate problems frequently subsumed under headings like “The Initiation of War,” “The Commencement of War,” “The Legal Meaning of War” and “State and Effects of War,” or under the simple query “When does war exist (or begin)?”

In its Advisory Opinion of October 23, 1956, in the matter of Judgments of the Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organization upon Complaints made against the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Some time in 1907, Mr. Blihu Root, then Secretary of State, asked Mr. Chandler P. Anderson, his special counsel on Canadian matters, “how far, if at all, this Government is restrained by treaty provisions or by international law or by comity of nations from authorizing the diversion of waters from Birch Lake basin, as proposed by the Minnesota Canal and Power Company.”

The status under international law of the Gulf of Aqaba has come to be a matter of concern not only to the several littoral states, but also to the international community. The basic issue, that of freedom of navigation in this arm of the Red Sea, has been brought into focus as a result of restrictive efforts of several of the coastal states with respect to Israeli shipping, for Arab-Israeli hostility has given political, strategic, commercial and even religious significance to a water area which, until recently, had attracted little attention.

It is the purpose of this article to investigate the status of concession agreements in the light of the rules of international law bearing on the power of a state to nationalize property. It is a continuation of an earlier article which explored the nature and function of the concession agreement in the national and international economies. The first article rested on the assumption that legal rules could not be fully understood or evaluated without a fairly clear understanding of the social facts which they were designed to regulate.

The critics of public international law are legion. Some have decried its primitiveness. Others have denied even its existence. A few have expounded the need for a renovation, an entirely new approach, a new international law.

Guidance of development in the British Commonwealth has involved the use of various legal means. In the field of international commercial relations perhaps none has been more striking than the adaptation of the familiar idea of most-favored-nation treatment.

Speaking before the American Society of International Law, Aleksandr Troianovski, the first Soviet Ambassador to the United States, summed up his views on the basic sources of order in international relations. He began by rejecting the idea of a “supernational support” for international law, since the source of the rules regulating the relations among nations “lies in the nations, and not in a superforce acting from above the nations.”

The governments of eleven Western countries have recently declined to accept a Soviet proposal to include an unconditional most-favored-nation clause in a draft All-European Agreement of Economic Co-operation.

1. In the course of the last decade, students of legal and economic questions have been attempting to throw some light on the problem of nationalizations in the Soviet satellite countries in general, and in Bulgaria in particular.

British Honduras, or Belize, has a diplomatic history at once notable and obscure. Bordered by the Mexican State of Quintana Roo, the Republic of Guatemala and the Caribbean Sea, this British Colony has an area of 8,598 square miles and is thus a little larger than Wales or Massachusetts.

The state traders of Eastern Europe are arguing that the principle of equality of states enshrined in the United Nations Charter must be extended to international commercial intercourse to prevent discrimination. This was the theme of the opening session of a recent conference of scholars gathered in Rome to consider the impact of state trading upon the law governing commercial relations of states.

If Americans pause to consider and discuss the legal aspects of the action of the United States in landing Marines at Beirut on July 15, 1958, it is primarily for their own information and intelligence and that of their friends in other countries, and possibly that of people in so-called neutralist countries who may still be open to understanding in this matter.

On September 17, 1939, Soviet troops crossed the Soviet-Polish frontier and, advancing rapidly, soon occupied the oft-disputed territory known at various times as Eastern Poland, Eastern Galicia, or Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia.