International law developed originally as a body of norms concerning, and for the benefit of, States and governments. The protection of the rights of the individual was of secondary concern in its early history. Even today, most of its basic premises, rules and principles are still shaped by the inter-State system characterising contemporary international relations. However, in modern times, there has been rising global insistence that States, governments, institutions and laws exist to serve the people and there is a persistent, universal outcry for the human rights and fundamental freedoms of the individual to be respected and assured. The human factor is emerging, at last, as the factor which should govern in every situation. With this objective in mind, the norms of international law are coming under persistent scrutiny from the point of view of whether they are conducive to the promotion and protection of the rights of the individual. And where the law has not yet developed responses for dealing with problems, old or new, affecting the rights of the individual, the international community expects of it that it should quickly show its capacity for imaginativeness and innovation and that it should demonstrate its ability to discharge its basic function: respecting, ensuring and advancing the dignity and rights of individuals throughout the world.

One of the objects of the Bank for International Settlements, as laid down in Article 3 of its Statutes, is “to act as trustee or agent in regard to international financial settlements entrusted to it under agreements with the parties concerned”. This text was adopted pursuant to the Final Act of the Hague Conference of 20 January 1930, and has remained unaltered since then. In fact it formed an annex to the Constituent Charter of the Bank, the text of the Constituent Charter being itself embodied in the convention respecting the Bank for International Settlements entered into at The Hague between the Governments of Germany Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Japan of the one part and the Government of the Swiss Confederation of the other part. This Convention was one of the many separate but related agreements which were simultaneously executed, or approved in form, at The Hague on 20 January 1930 to give effect to the Young Plan and thus settle the reparations question.

On 8 December 1971, the Police Court (Politierechter) of Arnhem convicted a defendant of having committed overt and joint violence against persons: he had severely beaten a passer-by in a public street. The judgment attracted general attention because the Court imposed a partially conditional sentence subject to the special condition that the offender should work every week-end for a period of three months in the Sociaal-Paedagogisch Centrum ‘s Konings Jaght at Schaarsbergen near Arnhem. The defendant fulfilled this condition. Through counsel, he had himself offered to do this work.

Recent research papers, by an eminent historian, on America's “road to Nuremberg” may be taken as a starting-point for a renewed analysis of this jurisprudential – and political – experience. The red thread to be followed is Colonel Bernays' postulate on the prosecution of war criminals – shorthanded as “conspiracy/criminal organization” – already in an advanced stage of elaboration before the three deaths in March 1945 which changed the whole pattern of summing up the politics of the war and its lessons, for both victors and vanquished. The first to die that month, on the 12th, was Roosevelt. On the 28th Mussolini was murdered, and Hitler committed suicide on the 30th.

Although Professor Van Eikema Hommes' article “Grotius on Natural and International Law” contains some acute observations, it is submitted that it provides an incorrect view of Grotius' methodology, which results in a one-sided description of his system of international law. The aim of this paper is to criticize this view through a more careful exposition of Grotius' methodology, and from this to derive a broad insight into the basics of his law of nations, in particular the law of war and natural law, which will be assessed in the light of modern conceptions.

The Convention relating to the arrest of seagoing ships entered into force for the Netherlands on 20 July 1983. Its purpose is, first of all, to limit the possibility of arrest to maritime claims, as summed up in Article 1 (inter alia, claims arising from: collisions, salvage, carriage, wages, mortgage). In addition, Article 7 grants jurisdiction on the merits to the courts of the country where the arrest was made, if the domestic law of that country so provides, or in any of six situations enumerated in that Article.