China is one of the eighteen privileged states whose continental shelf extends more than 200 miles beyond the base line from which the territorial sea is measured. According to the Law of the Sea Convention, states have a right to a continental shelf with its boundary positioned at a maximum width of 350 nautical miles, measured from the base line. It is in China's interests to safeguard its continental shelf rights because the report drawn up in 1968 by the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East revealed that there were probably extremely rich resources of oil beneath the continental shelf of the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea. However, China is not the only state in that area to lay claim to the continental shelf of the East China Sea. Taiwan, South and North Korea and Japan have also made claims on part of this area. The claims of the various states overlap and the delimitation of the area is therefore necessary.

Pour bien comprendre cette affaire extrêmement intéressante à beaucoup de points de vue et également importante pour l'avenir du règlement judiciaire des litiges internationaux et de la Cour Internationale de Justice elle-même, il faut être au courant de bien des faits. C'est pourquoi nous commencerons par exposer succinctement la genèse de l'affaire, à première vue assez simple, et les détails nécessaires de sa soumission à la Cour pour arrêt (§ 1), ainsi que le développement de la procédure écrite et orale (§ 2); nous exposerons les questions sur lesquelles les débats judiciaires devant la Cour et les discussions en chambre du conseil se sont concentrés (§ 3); nous résumerons ensuite la prise de position définitive de la Cour (§ 4) et les opinions dissidentes d'une minorité, curieusement divisée, de six juges sur le total statutaire de quinze (tous présents) (§ 5) et nous finirons par quelques réflexions personnelles (§ 6). Grâce à la formulation du dispositif de l'arrêt, le désaccord de six juges sur des points importants n'en a pas empêché cependant l'adoption finale par un vote de douze voix contre trois. Comme d'ordinaire, l'arrêt lui-même ne révèle pas clairement sur certains points, et ne révèle pas du tout sur bien d'autres, la division des opinions qui s'est fait jour en chambre du conseil. On ne peut s'en rendre compte d'une façon adéquate qu'en analysant méticuleusement les 73 pages d'opinions individuelles et dissidentes trahissant quelquefois l'ardeur réprimée, mais bienfaisante, d'une forte conviction intime contraire à celle de la majorité, et en les confrontant avec le texte sec et laconique des 20 pages de l'arrêt, — travail intellectuel qui présente beaucoup d'affinité avec la solution, dans une heure de loisir, d'un cassetête chinois.

La deuxième Conférence sur le Droit de la Mer s'est réunie à Genève, le 16 mars 1960, afin de poursuivre les travaux de la première Conférence qui s'était tenue dans la même ville du 24 février au 28 avril 1958.

‘Error is the mark of the higher organisms’. This statement struck me again when, composing myself to the honourable and pleasant task of preparing a contribution to the Liber Amicorum for my learned friend Bert Voskuil, I reconsidered ‘the Case of Zaire’, a case which raised the question whether and to what extent a judicial error was committed by the Dutch court that declared a foreign State bankrupt. If the judgment has to be considered an error of law, that court certainly qualified as a ‘higher organism’.

Let us first look at the facts of the case.

A vast amount has been written, in books and articles, upon the subject of the seizure by Governments of foreign-owned property, whether the process is called Nationalization or Expropriation or by some other name. I propose, however, to confine myself mainly to the relevant law laid down by tribunals, both international and national, in dealing with the matter and to the practice of States— these two sources being the principal sources of international law, and I shall cite very few authors. Law becomes more concrete when applied to the particular facts of an actual incident, and in such circumstances it is easier to distinguish between lex lata and lex ferenda; it is only the former that I am concerned with now.

Much of the history of twentieth century international law was shaped by efforts to reduce recourse to the use of force through the codification of a restrictive doctrine of ‘just war’. After September 11th, 2001, the US Administration under George W. Bush has sought to resurrect an expansive doctrine of just war, one rooted in broad moral, rather than restrictive legal, assessments of threats and punishments. Existing rules ask us to pause and inquire whether war is necessary and just. The debate over Iraq laid bare failings in these rules, requiring action. Yet the need to limit resort to war is as great as ever. Legal rules cannot prevent the use of force; nor can they prevent violations that states perceive to be in their fundamental interests. Rather, international law provides a framework against which states' actions are assessed, and imposes a heavy burden of justification. Is a given war justified as self-defense? Is a state asserting a need to create a new legal category of humanitarian intervention, based upon a responsibility to protect? Does it claim a threat to international peace and security that would normally require Security Council action? If international law is to offer meaningful criteria for and constraints on the resort to war, the recent tendency to merge different justifications for the use of force into one category of threat prevention must be resisted.

The Federal Republic of Germany has enacted a new civil liability law. The Environmental Liability Act of 1990 provides a civil damages remedy for wrongful death, personal injury, or property damage caused by an environmental impact Under the ELA, operators of certain named facilities are strictly liable for emissions causing such injuries. Thus, the ELA supplements the several remedies already available against polluters under prior legislation. New in the ELA is a single statutory scheme of strict liability for damage stemming from impact on all three elements — water, soil, and air.

Since its establishment in 2002, the African Union (AU) has accorded particular importance to the establishment of a robust mechanism for effectively responding to conflicts in Africa. This emerging mechanism established under the Protocol Relating to the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council (PSC Protocol) is known as the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA). Central to the APSA is the PSC, which, like the UN Security Council, is ‘a standing decision-making organ for the prevention, management and resolution of conflicts’. The PSC is vested with expansive powers covering the prevention, management and resolution of conflicts in Africa. In this context, the PSC Protocol not only makes numerous direct references to human rights but it also assigns the PSC with specific responsibilities vis-à-vis the protection of human rights. Despite the PSC's express mandate with respect to human rights and the crucial importance and link of human rights to peace and security in Africa, little has however been written and discussed on the subject of human rights from the perspective of the works of the PSC and generally within the context of AU initiatives for the promotion, maintenance and restoration of peace and security in Africa. In an effort to contribute towards filling this lacuna, this article seeks to consider the place of human rights within the mandates of the PSC and the need for and the extent to which they are integrated into the PSC's work for the prevention, management and resolution of conflicts in Africa

The theory of command responsibility is established in the field of international humanitarian law. The practical problems for the application of the theory were especially highlighted in the General Yamashita case, decided by a United States military commission in Manila in October 1945. Defence counsel in the case stated that the theory, as relied upon by the commission, was new law at that point in time, because it asserted that criminal responsibility of a commander would arise even if he was relevant to the crimes committed by his subordinates only by reason of his capacity qua their commander.

One of the controversial questions in the area of human rights has been that concerning the status of economic, social and cultural rights; and while the entry into force of the two Covenants in 1976 may be considered as conclusively establishing the status of these rights under international law some dissent on the matter continues to be expressed. Much of the debate on this issue has centered on the question whether economic, social and cultural rights are “true” rights or “legal” rights of individuals; and the fact that liberal Western philosophy and socialist philosophy give different answers to this question has inevitably invested the issue with ideological and political rivalry and prestige. In part, the heavy emphasis upon producing legal documents, such as resolutions, declarations and conventions has obviously contributed to the above preoccupation. That emphasis is understandable up to a point because the rule of law is clearly the most reliable way of protecting, or redressing the violation of, human rights, and the international instruments seek to strengthen the rule of law within states. Nonetheless, this preoccupation has perhaps contributed to the restriction of attention to legal factors, to the consequent neglect of the social context within which the rule of law inevitably has to be established. The unhappy result has been that, excepting the European Convention, human rights treaties have remained largely unimplemented, even by states for whom they have entered into force, and that they are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.