In August 1993, this Journal devoted an entire special issue to the future of international arbitration in general, andthe Permanent Court of Arbitration in particular. Its editors viewed this special issue inter alia as a contribution to the UN Decade of International Law. It is not entirely coincidental that 1999, the final year of the Decade, will also mark the centennial of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA). This commemorative link is expressly acknowledged in the UN Resolution initiating the Decade.

In order to protect European industries against dumped imports from countries which are not members of the EEC, the Community authorities may impose anti-dumping duties. The relevant rules are laid down in Council Regulation 2176/84 and are based on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the GATT Anti-Dumping Code. The European Commission is responsible for investigating cases; it is empowered to impose provisional anti-dumping duties or to accept so-called “price undertakings” offered by the exporters to raise their prices. These price undertakings purport to eliminate the dumping, i.e., generally speaking, the difference between domestic and export price, or its injurious effects. They are advantageous for the exporters since the price increase goes to them rather than to the custom authorities in the form of a duty.

The expansion of the Security Council's membership is presently being seriously debated by the international community. The UN Charter is most likely to be amended if agreement is reached in negotiations now underway.At the same time, a number of other possible fundamental reforms, also requiring Charter amendments, are being discussed in various UN fora. The question arises whether the Charter could or should be amended only once during our generation or many times over a period of a few years.

There are, of course, a variety of arenas available for the implementation and expansion of international law. The UN Decade on International Law provides a natural occasion for assessing their relative utility at this stage of international relations. Often the emphasis is placed on procedural steps that encourage states to use judicial arenas for third-party application of international law. In this regard great attention is given to the encouragement of steps towards the formal acceptance by governments of the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, and to the insertion in treaties of compromissory clauses and dispute settlement procedures that entail a legal duty to resolve conflict through the impartial application of international law, and the related obligation to respect the outcome of such an agreed process. For major disputes between states such an app roach to the application of international law remains highly desirable, and needs to be encouraged in every possible way. Extending the domain of compulsory jurisdiction to address both disputes of regionaland inter-regional scope also tends to extend the protection of international law to weaker and more vulnerable states, especially if a stronger tradition of compliance can be established.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) is specifically charged in its Statute with the protection of victims and witnesses. This mandatory consideration is also reflected in its Rules of Procedure and Evidence (‘the Rules’). As a newly created international judicial organization, the 18 months since the very first decision granting protective measures for victims and witnesses was issued have been highly influential in identifying and laying down the basic principles upon which such protection may be granted within the context of the unique legal framework of the ICTY. The completion of the first trial has enabled the ICTY to put those principles into practice and evaluate them over a six-month period. This article will focus mainly on the experiences gained from the Tadić trial, with reference to other cases for completeness.

The author describes the main characteristics of the English judicial system and its methodology. A central topic is the so-called judicial legislation, as is illustrated by the developing case lawwith respect to the tort of negligence. The method has the twin advantages of flexibility and pragmatism and it also has the advantages of speed. But there is a minus side also. First, the development of the law in this way can only be achieved at the expense of certainty. Secondly, it involves the alteration of the law, sometimes a quite radical alteration, without any extensive consideration of the practical and economic results such as would take place in the course of parliamentary scrutiny and debate. Judges are not the elected representatives of the people and the methodology of English Judges which results in the development and alteration of the law without the benefit of parliamentary debate may not perhaps be altogether a satisfactory democratic process to a constitutional purist.

This article focuses on the challenges of ‘long-delayed’ prosecutions, that is, criminal prosecutions that begin decades after the conflict, using the experience of the International Criminal Tribunal for Bangladesh (ICT-BD) as a case study. This issue is still an insufficiently discussed topic even though such prosecutions are likely to become more common in the future. The focus of this article is mainly on the legal and broader, transitional justice challenges of long-delayed prosecutions at the ICT-BD. The article examines how such prosecutions have had a contradictory, two-fold effect: on the one hand, they have partially broken the endemic culture of impunity that was allowed to prevail for decades in Bangladesh. On the other hand, however, they have been highly controversial and may have served to deepen alienation of the Islamist opposition in Bangladesh. The article concludes that the question of whether long-delayed prosecutions are desirable for a particular society remains highly context-dependent and, in some cases, mechanisms other than criminal trials may be better suited to dealing with the past.

The European Social Charter (ESC) was signed in 1961 and has been in force since 1965. Protecting 19 fundamental rights, it was conceived as the counterpart, in the field of social and economic rights, to the European Convention on Human Rights. However, it was considered to have several shortcomings as a human right instrument, namely a slow, confusing and government-controlled monitoring mechanism as well as a list of protected rights that was incomplete. This last criticism was partly met by the Additional Protocol to the Charter of 1988, which guaranteed four additional rights. However, an informal Ministerial Conference on Human Rights held in Rome on 5 November 1990 acknowledged that one had to go further. The ministers invited the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe to take the necessary steps for a detailed study of the role, content, and operation of the European Social Charter with a view to giving it a new impetus. In response, the Committee of Ministers authorized the convening of an ad hoc committee, the Committee on the European Social Charter (the so-called “Charte-Rel Committee”). It was instructed to make proposals for improving the effectiveness of the Charter and, in particular, the functioning of its supervisory machinery. In carrying out its task, the Committee consulted the international representatives of management and labour, including the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and the Union of the Confederations of Industry and Employers of Europe (UNICE), as well as the International Labour Organization (ILO) at all stage.

The third decision of the House of Lords in the Pinochet matter is significant, because the House of Lords upheld the majority view taken in the first decision: heads of state can, under certain circumstances, be held responsible for gross violations of human rights in the criminal courts of a foreign country. The decision is based on three main pillars. The Lords had, first, to clarify what constitutes an extradition crime under the Extradition Act 1989; second, to construct torture as an international crime; and, finally, to reject the plea of immunity of a former head of state in the context of the international crime of torture.

While the most important feature of the judgment given by the International Court of Justice in the LaGrand case is probably the conclusion that provisional measures indicated by the Court are binding, the decision is not without significance in the field of diplomatic protection.

Of the three existing core crimes in international criminal law, crimes against humanity is the most elusive one, a chameleonic crime that can change colour over time, since it does not possess an unambiguous conceptual character. The characterizing element of genocide obviously is the specific intent to destroy. War crimes must have a nexus with an armed conflict. The identifying element of crimes against humanity is more difficult to pin down as the contextual elements have changed over time.

With the black letter law of the UN Charter denying states to unilaterally intervene in third states on humanitarian grounds, this article tries to project a picture of the moral controversy of humanitarian intervention as a balance for order and justice. The author argues that some post-cold war armed interventions may be taken as evidence of an emerging rule of international law outside the UN Charter system allowing the use of unilateral humanitarian intervention to keep a third state from committing large-scale human rights violations on its own territory. However, in the absence of prior authorization from the relevant UN organs, it is necessary to address concerns of possible abuse and manipulations of such an emerging rule. The article includes recommendations to this end.

To go to war for an idea, if the war is aggressive, not defensive, is as criminal as to go to war for territory or revenue; for it is as little justifiable to force our ideas on other people, as to compel them to submit to our will in any other respect. But there assuredly are cases in which it is allowable to go to war, without having been ourselves attacked, or threatened with attack; and it is very important that nations should make up their minds in time, as to what these cases are.John Stuart Mill, A Few Words on Non-Intervention (1859)

Two additional agreements have been concluded on the enforcement of sentences of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). On 25 February 2000, an agreement was concluded between the Government of the French Republic and the United Nations on the enforcement of sentences of the ICTY. Thus, France thereby became the first permanent member of the Security Council to conclude such an agreement. A month later, on 28 March 2000, another agreement was concluded between the Kingdom of Spain and the United Nations. Both these agreements will enter into force upon notification to the United Nations by the respective states that the necessary national legal requirements have been met. Previously, agreements have been concluded with the following states: Italy, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Austria.

This paper argues that the concerns and methodology of the recently completed Report of the International Law Commission (ILC) over the fragmentation of international law presuppose a particular way of understanding legal language which tends to separate the understanding of rules from their factual adaptability to certain recurring social problems faced within specific institutional contexts. The paper argues that separating rules from their factual adaptability focuses the analysis on surface coherence – coherence at the level of abstract terms and phrases. It is the argument of this paper that this presupposition is not warranted, and that the understanding of rules cannot be thus separated. An alternative model of the understanding of legal language is developed on the basis of the work of Bernard Jackson and Geoffrey Samuel. This is further supplemented by the approach to the study of institutional contexts in the recent work of Robert Summers and John Bell. Together, these resources can lead to the analysis of the deep coherence of the international legal order, that being one that prioritizes not the unity of that order, but its responsiveness. The ideal of responsive law is elaborated upon by reference to the work of Philip Selznick and Philippe Nonet. Finally, a different agenda for the ILC is offered on the basis of the methodology of deep coherence. The upshot is that the paper calls for a reorientation of international legal theory, away from concerns about ‘the law itself’ and towards an engagement with the responsiveness of legal work performed in international legal institutions.

This article considers the work of John Dugard in the field of human rights and international law and the impact thereof on the South African legal landscape. After tracing the importance of Dugard's early work in South Africa in the fields of legal philosophy, human rights, and international law, the article turns to consider the later achievements in Dugard's prestigious career. The author highlights the numerous cases in which Dugard appeared as counsel before the South African courts, and considers the impact that Dugard had on the drafting of the South African Constitution in relation to international law and its use in interpreting the South African Bill of Rights. The final section of the article considers the shameful failure of the South African government to support Dugard in his bid to be appointed as a judge of the International Court of Justice. The author concludes that notwithstanding the fact that the government has not accorded him the recognition he deserves, Dugard's pioneering human rights work continues unabated in his various positions, including in his role as the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights abuses in occupied Palestine.

The liberal extension by the United States of its laws to non-resident non-nationals under a so called ‘effects’ doctrine has been the cause of much concern to its closest trading allies. Some fear the European Court of Justice's recent Woodpulp case indicates that the European Community will follow the example of the United States. Jeffrey examines the legality of the ‘effects’ doctrine before looking in detail at the ECJ's decision in Woodpulp. He concludes that the Woodpulp case will not support the use of an ‘effects’ doctrine. Instead it evidences an exciting development in Community jurisprudence within the accepted limits of international law.