Dans le dernier numéro, la Rédaction a encore eu la possibilité de faire part de la mort subite du Professeur E. M. Meijers en qui la Hollande perd le plus grand juriste qu'elle possédait à ce moment-là.

Après avoir été pendant cinq ans avocat à Amsterdam, Meijers fut nommé en 1910 professeur de droit civil à Leyde. Il n'a jamais écrit de manuel de droit privé mais, en 1941, après avoir été interné par les forces d'occupation allemandes, pour la seule raison qu'il était juif, il a eu la puissance d'esprit d'écrire en prison, sans avoir à sa disposition aucun livre juridique, son ouvrage magistral «De Algemene Begrippen van het Burgerlijk Recht» (Les Notions Générales du Droit Civil).

Just as in the Fisheries Case (see p. 252 sqq.), a preliminary question as to the real scope of the proceedings might easily have arisen. Theoretically four answers to the problem of territorial sovereignty over the two disputed groups of small Channel islands would have been possible: sovereignty belongs to France; it belongs to Great Britain; the islets constitute a condominium; or they are terra nullius. From the outset the Court, however, took it for granted that the only choice under the Special Agreement of December 29th, 1950, lay as between British and French sovereignty, though it had freedom to come to a different conclusion in regard to either of the two groups. The task entrusted to the Court “to determine whether the sovereignty over the islets and rocks (in so far as they are capable of appropriation) of the Minquiers and Ecrehos groups respectively belongs to the United Kingdom or the French Republic” was thus interpreted by it as being designed to determine “which of the Parties has produced the more convincing proof of title to one or the other of these groups or to both of them.” The adjudication of sovereignty, being essentially an absolute title to a particular territory to the exclusion of, and vis-à-vis all other States, was thereby more or less reduced to the weighing of the respective titles, or at least of the relative probative force of the arguments adduced on either side in support thereof. In this respect the situation was exactly the same as in the case of the Palmas or Miangas island decided in 1928 by Professor Max Huber as sole arbitrator in a suit brought before the Permanent Court of Arbitration by the Netherlands and the United States Governments in virtue of a Special Agreement of 1925 under a previous general Arbitration Treaty of 1908.

The landmark case of modern international law of economic warfare, Anderson v. N.V. Transandine Handelmaatschappij, dealing with the application of Royal Decree A 1 of May 24, 1940, was once more the subject of judicial consideration, after an interval of more than ten years, in State of the Netherlands v. Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Archimedes. It may briefly be recalled that the Royal Decree A 1 of the government-in-exile vested protective title in the State of the Netherlands to claims capable of being transferred outside the Realm in Europe and belonging to persons domiciled in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, for the purpose of conserving the rights of the former owners. It was this conservatory character of the Decree, as expressly stated in its art. 1(3), that militated against any confiscatory concept which might have prevented its extraterritorial application to assets located in the United States. Indeed, the conservatory character was stressed in all subsequent decisions which held Royal Decree A 1 applicable in the United States.

The most comprehensive and authoritative enumeration of sources of international law is contained in Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice. It is well known, however, that this enumeration is far from satisfactory both as regards its formulation and its completeness. The definition of international custom in article 38. 1 (b) has often been criticized; it has further become necessary to emphasize the distinction between general principles of law as mentioned in Article 38. 1 (c) and principles of international law, which are not expressly mentioned in the article and which do not always coincide with international custom; moreover certain unilateral acts are, apparently, supposed to fall under the scope of Article 38. 1 (a) referring to international conventions, as is also the case with an increasingly productive source of international law, namely the decisions of international organs.

1. To those who are striving for the establishment of one uniform system of maritime law, the 25th day of August, 1924 must no doubt be an important mile-post on the long road which they hope will one day lead to the desired goal.

On that day diplomatic representatives of a number of nations at Brussels signed two International Conventions, one relating to the limitation of liability of the shipowner and the other to the liability of the carrier in the case of carriage of goods under a bill of lading.

In this essay attention is drawn to the appearance in many commercial treaties as well as in several recent multilateral agreements of the term “non-discriminatory treatment” next to or in place of the well established formula of the most-favoured nation treatment. Although apparently similar in wording and purpose—a guarantee of non-discrimination—the principle of non-discrimination covers much more ground than the obligation of most-favoured nation treatment. The beginnings of this mutation in commercial treaty law go back as far as the early thirties when quota systems and foreign currency regulations made their appearance, and the treaty terms had to be adapted to these new situations in order to assure “fair proportionate shares”, “fair and equitable treatment”, etc. This transformation and partial elimination of the m.f.n. clause occurred at a time when negotiations on tariff-reductions became more and more difficult, due to the refusal by countries maintaining a highly developed negotiable tariff system to grant duty reductions gratuitously, as well as to the attitude of other protectionist countries claiming unconditional m.f.n. treatment without being disposed to lower their own high import duties. As one author rightly observed: the m.f.n. clause was being made the scapegoat of what really was the failure of economic policies.