Most textbooks on private international law, when dealing with public policy, refer to its relativity. “Public policy is not absolute but relative”. This relativity rule appears to have three different functions. The first is merely to stress that it is always the result in the concrete case that counts. Here “relativity” is a misleading description.

The aim of this study is to discuss the fishery rights of the landlocked and geographically disadvantaged states. Such discussion, however, relates to other discussions concerning the rights of the landlocked states of access to the sea and freedom of transit, the claims of the landlocked and geographically disadvantaged states to mineral resources of the sea and so on.

The duty or obligation not to infringe constitutionally protected fundamental human rights which have hitherto been owed by state organs towards individuals may now have been extended, in certain countries, to encompass relationships between individuals. This particular development – also referred to as an issue relating to “third parties (Drittwirkung)” or alternatively as one concerning the “horizontal” or “intersubjective” application of fundamental human rights – appears to have its origins in the German doctrine of the so-called “absolute effect of human rights”, whereby fundamental human rights which are defined in constitutions are considered to be enforceable by individuals against other private persons as well as by public authorities.

Both in the Netherlands and in West Germany, producers and merchants are very much accustomed to using standard forms of contract in their domestic business dealings, probably more so than their brethren in most other countries. The incidence of standard forms in international trade is probably even higher, since these transactions are concluded almost exclusively between businessmen.