This article addresses the unresolved question of the international legal status, and resulting rights, of Omar Khadr — a Canadian national detained by the United States on the battlefield in Afghanistan at the age of fifteen and subsequently incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay. The article focuses primarily on Khadr’s potential status as an “unlawful combatant” and as a child soldier. Acknowledging that there has been a great deal of scholarly debate surrounding these issues, it provides an overview of this debate through the lens of Khadr’s particular case. As the author observes, international law surrounding each aspect of Khadr’s status is far from clear. However, even accepting the existence of controversy and ambiguity surrounding Khadr’s status, the author argues that the United States and Canada have, seemingly, sought to exploit this ambiguity in order to justify disregard for his rights. The article concludes by observing that this approach is, in itself, contrary to the foundational principles of international humanitarian law.

The Hague Conference of 1899 was the first to address the need for a permanent body for the settlement of differences between states. The ensuing Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes entered into force in 1900. At the second Hague Conference in 1907 the provisions of the 1899 Convention were expanded in a new convention of the same title which entered into force in 1910. These conventions established the Permanent Court of Arbitration, which in reality is neither “permanent” nor a “court” but rather a panel of persons, up to four being named by each participating state, from which arbitrators can be selected.

The word “utopia” is a pun on eu topos (a good place) and ou topos (no place). While utopia in the sense of eu topos refers to an ideal society and its realization, utopia in the sense of ou topos emphasizes a mode of narrative rather than a political goal. Traditionally, the utopian form is a traveller’s account of a visit to an imaginary country where the journey is either to a far-off land or to the distant future. This article offers an appreciation of Ronald St. John Macdonald as a practitioner, presenter, and promoter of the utopian form in international law. Beyond the ability of a particular eu-topia to confront us with a complete package of ideas for international law that would otherwise remain unimagined, ou-topia generally encourages comprehensive and radical thinking about international law’s future and perhaps even jolts us into a heightened consciousness of our creativity and potential for change. The article also touches on the corresponding disadvantages of utopias and speculates that Macdonald reconciles the advantages and disadvantages partly through the fact that the power of the utopian form is available even to those who have been historically and unjustly excluded from international law.

La Relation Geographique entre le Canada et les Etats-Unis est unique. Ensemble, ils occupent la majeure partie du continent nord-américain tout en s’individualisant l’un de l’autre par une frontière politique est-ouest (de l’Atlantique au Pacifique) et nord-sud (entre l’Alaska et le Yukon) qui totalise plus de 6,500 kilomètres de longueur. Les côtes canadiennes et américaines sont baignées par trois océans et les plateaux continentaux adjacents à ces côtes occupent respectivement, selon la classification mondiale, le deuxième et le troisième rang quant à leur superficie.

This article examines whether the characterization of a regulatory measure as expropriatory depends upon the objective intent of the state in enacting that measure. The issue of regulatory expropriation is of particular importance, given the fact that a number of recent multilateral investment treaties, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, grant investors a right of direct action against a foreign state for losses arising out of measures that are “tantamount” to expropriation.

This article will first consider the respective approaches of the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal and the United States to regulatory expropriation. These approaches will be then briefly contrasted with the unique jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights. Next, the role of intent in municipal law as a means of categorization will be addressed and a case made as to why this approach is equally viable on the international plane. In conclusion, reasons will be given as to why a test based on intent is to be preferred over other theories.

For our present purpose it is useful to divide the Commonwealth countries into two categories according to the circumstances under which they achieved international recognition as subjects of international law: first, the older Dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Irish Free State and South Africa which acquired international identity through a gradual process of constitutional transition from Crown colony systems to responsible governments; and, second, the colonial territories that have become independent states since 1945.

This article proposes a new model for the engagement of sub-state units with the international legal order. “Trialogical subsidiarity” acknowledges that some areas are best regulated locally, but it also argues that international law has an increasing say in areas traditionally reserved for local law. The implementation of an international cultural heritage treaty by constituent units (CUs) in federal states, despite objections of the federal authorities, is a case study for the possibilities and implications of the use of international law by CUs without the filtering of the central state. This use enhances the legitimacy of international law and can lead to better outcomes for local populations, moving international law closer to its promise of being a law of peoples rather than of states.

Le recours aux mesures conservatoires devant la Cour international de Justice (CIJ) a sensiblement augmenté mais une évolution significative a été notée dernièrement. Ces développements mettent en exergue la montée en puissance des juridictions internationals soit du fait de l’immobilisme du Conseil de sécurité, soit en raison d’un effet boule de neige de la multiplication en un temps record des juridictions pénales internationales après la chute du mur de Berlin et de l’effondrement de l’URSS. Destinées à l’origine à preserver les droits des parties et à conserver les preuves lors d’une procédure principale devant la CIJ, les mesures conservatoires sont devenues un véritable instrument au service de la paix et la sécurité internationales. Elles ont, en effet, la priorité sur toutes autres questions portées devant la CIJ et permettent ainsi de réagir rapidement dans les situations d’urgence. Les deux ordonnances en indication de mesures conservatoires prononcées en 2011 consolident d’une part la jurisprudence de la CIJ. Mais elles contribuent d’autre part à l’extension du champ d’application des mesures édictées, mettant ainsi la CIJ sur un pied d’égalité avec le Conseil de sécurité dans son rôle d’organe des Nations Unies (ONU) participant à la réalisation des objectifs de la Charte de l’ONU. Cette concurrence se manifeste au niveau du litige dont le Conseil ou la CIJ peuvent être saisis, mais elle peut se manifester également dans la nature des mesures que la CIJ va édicter et qui ont été dernièrement de nature militaire notamment à travers la création d’une zone démilitarisée, chose qui était traditionnellement du resort du Conseil de sécurité. Ce qui pose la question de la force obligatoire de ces ordonnances et de leur exécution mais aussi un risqué de détournement de procédure qui pourrait paradoxalement refroidir le désir des États de recourir à la Cour mondiale.

For anyone who is interested in the methodology of choice of law, no field is more rewarding than that of contracts. As domestic laws of contracts develop a progressively more intricate relationship between the principles of social regulation and private autonomy, private international law is led to develop choice of law techniques that will keep an appropriate balance between these principles in interjurisdictional cases. Choice of law rules that underemphasize the interests of the parties, and rely instead on the regulatory concerns of states that are affected by the transaction, may place too many obstacles in the way of persons who should be left to arrange their transaction in the way they think best. At the same time, choice of law rules that give too much weight to the parties’ wishes may interfere unduly with a state’s ability to regulate a transtaction with which it has a legitimate concern. In this respect, balance is more difficult to achieve in contracts than it is elsewhere.

On Sait Que l’élection québécoise du 15 novembre 1976 a porté au pouvoir un parti politique, le Parti québécois (P.Q.), dont le programme de gouvernement prévoit l’accession du Québec à la pleine souveraineté étatique assortie d’une libre association de nature économique (et plus ou moins confédérale) avec le reste du Canada. On sait aussi que l’Etat québécois constitue pour l’instant l’un des dix Etats membres de la fédération canadienne et jouit par conséquent, en qualité d’Etat fédéré, de certaines compétences autonomes: celles que prévoit la “constitution canadienne” — c’est-à-dire, plus précisément, le British North America Act de 1867 (loi du Parlement britannique) tel qu’interprété par la jurisprudence.

John Erskine Read, Q.C., D.C.L., LL.D., was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on July 5, 1888, and died on December 3, 1973, in the words of his friend Max Wershof “full of mental vigour to the last.” After graduating in Dalhousie Law School in 1909, he completed a year’s post-graduate study in Columbia University, New York. As a Rhodes scholar he then went to University College, Oxford, where he took a “double first” in winning his B.A. and B.C.L. In 1913 he was called to the Nova Scotia bar, joining the firm of Harris, Henry, Rogers and Harris. After distinguished service with the Canadian Field Artillery in World War I, in which he was wounded and invalided out with the acting rank of Major, he returned to that firm as a partner in 1918. In 1920 he joined the Faculty of Law of Dalhousie University, and was Dean between 1924 and 1929. In 1929 he was appointed Legal Adviser of the Department of External Affairs and held that position until he was elected a member of the International Court of Justice on February 6, 1946.

Lors de sa dernière réunion, qui cut lieu en septembre 1970, le Comité des utilisations pacifiques de l’espace extra-atmosphérique a noté que “le Groupe de travail (des satellites de radiodiffusion directe) avait estimé qu’au moins dans un avenir prévisible, la coopération internationale dans ce domaine devrait s’exercer à un niveau régional, trouvant son expression dans la participation à la creation et à l’exploitation de systèmes régionaux de radiodiffusion par satellites et/ou à la préparation et à la production de programmes pour ces systèmes et que les Etats membres et les organisations régionales et internationales devraient en conséquence favoriser la coopération régionale, tant au niveau gouvernemental que non gouvernemental, en particulier parmi les organismes de radiodiffusion et leurs associations.”