Since the founding ofthe UBC law school in 1945 international law has had a prominent place. The author traces the teaching of international law from the days when it was a compulsory course to 2000 and discusses the personalities who have taught the subject and the issues that have affected the teaching of international law over those years.

L’ampleur de la criminalité internationale et de l’impunité qui en résulte exige que la communauté internationale développe de nouvelles stratégies afin de venir à about de ce phénomène. Bien que les juridictions pénales internationales soient souvent présentées comme une panacée, force est de constater que les juridictions étatiques interviennent pour leur prêter main forte dans la lutte contre l’impunité. Cet article se propose d’analyser l’opportunité de l’intervention des juridictions étatiques traditionnelles ou communautaires dans l’administration de la justice pénale internationale. Après avoir établi que leur intervention trouve des assises en droit international, l’auteur conclut que les juridictions traditionnelles ne sont pas juridiquement ni logistiquement outillées pour réprimer les crimes internationaux les plus graves. Néanmoins, dans les Etats où des violences massives ont eu lieu impliquant la participation de la population, l’auteur estime que celle-ci ainsi que les institutions populaires existantes peuvent être associées dans le règlement judiciaire de la crise afin de mieux définir de nouvelles bases de cohabitation sociale. L’implication judiciaire des institutions traditionnelles est envisageable à deux niveaux: la répression des infractions mineures, en l’occurrence celles contre les propriétés, qui sont commises à l’occasion de la perpétration des crimes odieux qui offensent la conscience de toute l’humanité d’une part, et, d’autrepart, l’implication des juges-citoyens comme jurés dans le cadre des procès pour crimes internationaux proprement dits. La population quant à elle peut être appelée à jouer un rôle de premier plan dans la recherche de la vérité historique et dans la manifestation de la vérité judiciaire.

This article addresses the issue of horizontal allocation of judicial jurisdiction between the dispute settlement mechanisms of regional trade agreements (RTAs) and that of the World Trade Organization (WTO). There could be various instances where overlaps of jurisdiction in dispute settlement could occur. Overlaps and even conflicts of jurisdiction are unavoidable due to the quasi-automatic and compulsory nature of the WTO dispute settlement mechanism. With a view to furthering discussions on this issue, the article proceeds to examine a number of principles of international commercial law that deal with overlaps and conflicts: forum conveniens and forum non conveniens; lis alibi pendens and res judicata as well as the principle of general international law; abuse of process, abuse of rights, and good faith; the exhaustion of RTA remedies; reference to the International Court of Justice; and the possibility of invoking Article 13 of the DSU to obtain evidence from RTA proceedings. Finally, the article suggests that in the current state of international law, no rules seem to offer any effective answer to resolve conflicts resulting from overlaps of jurisdiction in the context of the WTO Agreement and RTAs. It is thus for states to decide how the dispute settlement mechanisms of the WTO and RTAs should operate and interact with each other. The article concludes by pointing to areas of further discussions.

This article examines the extent to which international trade rules can constrain the policy choices of governments wishing to apply fiscal incentives to encourage biodiversity conservation. In order to facilitate the analysis, the article proposes three hypothetical fiscal incentives that could be implemented by the Canadian government to encourage the forest industry to use sustainable forestry practices. It then analyzes the application of the WTO SCM Agreement to the use of such measures. It condudes that while the SCM Agreement does constrain the government’s choice and implementation of economic instruments, it is possible to design measures to achieve the desired environmental goals without infringing trade rules. However, given the complexity ofthe subsidies rules and the importance of economic incentives as policy tools for achieving environmental objectives, the article recommends further consideration of this issue by the WTO and its members.

When the United Nations was formed, one of its earliest tasks was to develop an international bill of human rights that would recognize the individual in international law for the first time. This bill was envisioned to have three parts: a declaration, a convention, and a means of implementation. A number of conventions have since been opened for signature. Two of the means of implementation that have been developed are actions under the Optional Protocol of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights and ECOSOC Resolution 1503. This article examines some attempts on the part of individuals or groups to use these mechanisms to gain compensation for human rights violations. It is based on the papers of Canadian human rights advocate John Peters Humphrey, who as an UN official wrote the first draft of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, worked on the covenants, and first proposed Resolution 1503. Years later, as a private citizen, he helped bring a number of cases to the United Nations using these mechanisms. Humphrey and his allies also attempted to have a declaration of principle on the right to compensation for human rights violations adopted by the General Assembly — a question that has not yet been resolved.

In recent years, although the national application of international law has gathered much interest, the domestic point of view on the issue has not been adequately considered. The argument defended in this article is that the domestic use of international law is, as far as Canadian judges and other domestic actors are concerned, a question of statutory interpretation, which must be addressed, rationalized, and understood within this framework. First, the author refers to the principle according to which Canadian courts are not bound by international norms, including treaty norms, which is still valid even though some judicial and doctrinal statements seem to challenge it. International law cannot be binding upon national courts because the “Westphalian” model of international relations, regulated by the “Vattelian” legal structure, postulates the existence of an international plane that is distinct and separate from the internal spheres. Hence, the requirement that international conventions be implemented through the adoption of domestic legislation. Our courts interpret and apply Canadian law and, to the extent that international treaty law is part of domestic law, it may have an influence on them, but without ever binding them. The second part, and the main contribution of the article, consists of an analytical scheme of the persuasive force of international law. The practices of treaty implementation and how it relates to parliamentary intent — showing also that passive incorporation is impossible — as well as Driedger’s modern approach to statutory interpretation, which favours recourse to international law as a contextual element in all cases over a presumption of conformity involving the preliminary and artificial requirement of ambiguity are discussed in the article. In the final analysis, it is shown that the weight of the international law argument shall be based on the degree of incorporation of treaty norms within the Canadian legal system. In this regard, there would be four types of context in which fall the categories of treaty norms. In decreasing order of persuasive authority: (1) internal-immediate context; (2) internal-extended context; (3) external-immediate context; and (4) external-extended context.

Cet article examine la crise d'Asie Mineure et les dilemmes suscités par le phénomène du transfert de populations. Les conflits contemporains continuent d'être caractérisés par le nettoyage ethnique et les transferts de facto, malgré les nouvelles normes des droits de l'homme qui ont influencé le développement du droit international. Les instruments internationaux qui abordent la détresse des populations déplacées offrent d'habitude le choix entre le retour ou la compensation. Pourtant plusieurs exemples du XXe siècle indiquent que ces deux approches sont difficiles à mettre en application. L'analyse suggère que la relation entre la paix et le respect des droits de l'homme est plus complexe que communément admise. Le pragmatisme manifesté par le Haut Commissaire pour les réfugiés lors de la crise d'Asie Mineure ne devrait pas être écarté s'il représente une option réaliste afin d'éviter les massacres de populations civiles.

The author analyzes the Agreement between the Government of Canada and the Government of the United States of America for Cooperation in the Examination of Refugee Status Claims from Nations of Third Countries in light of the provisions of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and particularly the obligation of non-refoulement, and raises questions about the consistency of the agreement with Canada's humanitarian traditions and its obligations under international law.

Does state immunity limit the jurisdiction of Canadian courts in the context of civil proceedings relating to acts of extraterritorial torture? Such was the issue in Bouzari v. Islamic Republic of Iran. The Ontario Superior Court of Justice held that, pursuant to Canada's State Immunity Act (SIA), Iran was entitled to immunity in Canada for torture committed within its own borders. In this article on the law of state immunity, the decision in Bouzari is analyzed in light of contemporary international law and relevant jurisprudence. It is argued that the SIA has not evacuated the Canadian common law of state immunity, which continues to apply to all matters not covered by the statute. At common law, it is finally argued, torture cannot be considered an acta jure imperii.

La Haute Cour d’Australie rendait en 1998 son premier et seul arrêt concernant le traité de libre-échange liant l’Australie et la Nouvelle-Zélande, l’ Australia New Zealand Closer Economie Relations Trade Agreement (ANZCERTA), dans l'affaire Project Blue Sky v. Australian Broadcasting Authority. Dans cette affaire, la Haute Cour avait à déterminer les effets juridiques d'une disposition législative qui enjoignait un organe administratif à exercer ses pouvoirs statutaires de manière compatible avec ce traité. L’organe administratif en question avait certes adopté une norme incompatible avec l’ ANZCERTA, mais les juges de la majorité ont préféré ne pas invalider la norme, même si elle était illégale. Le juge en chef dissident a rejeté cette distinction entre invalidité et illégalité, dans un long obiter dictum, et jugé invalide la norme incompatible avec le traité, afin de donner leurs pleins effets juridiques internes à ces dispositions de renvoi sectoriel au droit international conventionnel. L'audition prochaine par la Cour suprême du Canada de la cause de la société multinationale Unilever, qui s’attaque à la réglementation québécoise sur la couleur de la margarine, invite à s’intéresser à nouveau à cet arrêt de la Haute Cour d'Australie, puisqu 'elle soulèvera la question de l’invocabilité des traités de libre-échange en droit interne canadien. Dans sa clarification du droit applicable en la matière, il est à souhaiter que la Cour suprême du Canada ne suivra pas le raisonnement de la majorité dans l’arrêt Project Blue Sky, et n’inhibera pas les dispositions de renvoi sectoriel, de façon à ce que ce procédé puisse être utilisé par les législateurs, si tel devait être leur souhait.