La question de l'immunité des navires d'Etat se distingue essentiellement du problème plus vaste de l'immunité des Etats étrangers en général en cela qu'elle fait l'objet d'une série de conventions multilatérales, tandis que les autres aspects de l'immunité des Etats ne sont que sporadiquement réglés par des conventions internationales. Les deux conventions de Bruxelles, signées le 23 septembre 1910, l'une sur l'unification de certaines règles en matière d'abordage, l'autre sur l'unification de certaines règles en matière d'assistance et de sauvetage maritimes contiennent les premières règles qui touchent notre sujet. Ces conventions portent sur les responsabilités et les actions en réparation des dommages du chef d'abordage, respectivement la procédure de fixation d'une rémunération pour l'assistance ou le sauvetage.

The case study that follows appears to demonstrate the commonly-noted features of international law: a decentralized and imperfect legal system, one lacking real functional and jural equivalents to the institutions found in domestic law, and one with the dédoublement fonctionnel problem. Illustrated another way, the problem is that during major disputes or crises political considerations tend to be primary while legal ones are secondary. This appears to have been particularly true in the relations between the superpowers during the cold War.

Of all the four Conventions the second Convention conforms most nearly with existing customary law and its contents are, at the same time, the most varied of them all. They comprise, in fact, all the traditional solutions to the various problems to which the regime of the high seas has, through the centuries, given rise. They almost form an extract from the many textbooks of public international law dealing with the high seas and there is hardly an element of surprise or novelty in them.

After 30 years of negotiations, the Rhine river is still very polluted. Although the concentration of some pollutants has diminished during the past few years, the quantity of other harmful substances is still increasing. This lack of progress can be explained to a large extent by a set of peculiar circumstances which seems to be unique for the Rhine. The most important of these circumstances is the international dimension of the situation. The main stem of the Rhine flows through the sovereign territories of Switzerland, the Federal Republic of Germany, France and the Netherlands. Its drainage area, moreover, also covers Italy, Austria, Luxemburg and Belgium. Obviously, no anti-pollution policy can hope to be effective until at least the most directly concerned of these eight States have reached agreement on common objectives and common measures. Reaching agreement, however, is complicated by the problem of conflicting uses which may be more intricate for the Rhine than for any other international river.

At the present time, the world commodity trade is primarily carried by ships. Merchant fleet and fishing vessels of 10,000 gross tonnage of more than thirty nations sail in and out of the port areas throughout the world carrying passengers and cargoes including inflammable gas and pollutant chemicals. The rapidly increasing intensity of traffic, the size of vessels, the speed of container and other ships, the growing danger of collision, loss of life and pollution underscores an important need for improved maritime communication.

After holding the issue on its agenda for many years, the UN Commission on Human Rights on 10 March 1987 adopted a path-breaking resolution supporting conscientious objection to military service as a ‘legitimate exercise of the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion recognized by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights! The Commission recommended that governments introduce various forms of alternative service for conscientious objectors, establish impartial procedures for deciding specific cases, and ‘refrain from subjecting such persons to imprisonment’.

The attempt to establish a New International Economic Order (NIEO) during the 1970s was an acrimonious period in international diplomacy and quite clearly failed, in retrospect, to achieve anything like the substantive change envisaged. This article considers one non-governmental attempt to move the debate forward, the 1986 International Law Association (ILA) Declaration on Progressive Development of Principles of Public International Law relating to a New International Economic Order. The article revisits the 1986 Seoul Declaration and considers to what extent its principles of international law remain valid for an economic system that has changed dramatically over the last twenty years. The article concludes that not only is the Seoul Declaration remarkably apposite to the current situation, but it has been re-energised by the emergence of the notion of sustainable development, itself a major topic within the International Law Association. In that sense, the Seoul principles – as now supplemented by the 2002 ILA New Delhi Declaration of Principles of International Law relating to Sustainable Development – remain foundational not only to the functioning of an equitable economic system but also, in the light of changing expectations, a sustainable international community, more generally.

The exercise, in the political sphere, of powers traditionally characterized as inherent in his office has become a well-established and particularly important activity of the United Nations Secretary-General.

In an article published in this Journal in 1969, entitled “An Evaluation of the Leading Principles of the Treaty on Outer Space of 27th January 1967”, the present writer gave some consideration to the nature and content of the fundamental principles laid down in this Treaty viz. the principle of freedom of outer space for exploration and use and the principle of outer space including the Moon and other celestial bodies being not subject to national appropriation. Attention was drawn to certain ambiguities and inconsistencies in the text and to the difficulties in ascertaining the common intention of the authors of the Treaty.

The Belgo-Spanish case concerning the Barcelona Traction, Light and Power Company, Ltd. (hereafter called Barcelona Traction), terminated in its preliminary phase by the Judgment of 24 July 1964, had had a prelude in 1958–1961, hence its official sub-title “New Application: 1962.” A corresponding action was in fact already instituted by a unilateral Belgian Application against Spain, dated 15 September 1958, filed on the following 23 September, but the proceedings thus initiated were discontinued by a unilateral communication addressed to the President of the Court by the Belgian Government on 23 March 1961, not opposed by the Spanish Government, and officially recorded by Order of the Court of 10 April 1961 (I.C.J. Reports 1961, p. 9).

This article addresses the impact of politics and diplomacy upon the enforcement of international legal obligations through the example of non-violation complaints in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Although this remedy inherited from the past has always been criticized, both the scope and the effects of non-violation complaints upon the WTO dispute settlement system have been disregarded and misunderstood. Only a few WTO members have insisted on using this remedy to the detriment of the immense majority of WTO members for which non-violation complaints still represent an unaffordable luxury. Therefore, this article retraces the negotiation history of this remedy and its entire jurisprudence in order to demonstrate that the WTO dispute settlement system can neither undermine the results of negotiations reflecting the power struggle amongst sovereign nation-states, nor remedy their failure to negotiate by creating new legal obligations. As a result, the security and predictability of the WTO dispute settlement system is at stake, for WTO panels and the Appellate Body have been reluctant and unable to define the ambiguous legal concept of non-violation.

1. A little over twelve years ago the Kingdom of the Netherlands ratified the European Convention of Human Rights and its First Additional Protocol. This study constitutes an inquiry into the application in the Netherlands of the rights guaranteed by the Convention and the Protocol, the influence they have exercised on the State organs that create or apply the law and their impact on the Dutch legal order in general. Such a study is the more called for, since the self-executing provisions of the Convention and Protocol, after publication, are directly applicable in the municipal legal order of the Netherlands, without any transformation or incorporation into national law being necessary. Moreover, these provisions take precedence over any contrary provisions of municipal law, whether enacted before or after the coming into force of the Convention. It can thus be said that the Dutch legal system— which will be explained hereafter in greater detail—perhaps more than that of any other Party to the Convention allows those falling within its ambit to profit from the rights and freedoms which the Convention extends. It will be interesting to note to what extent actual practice in the Netherlands with regard to the Convention conforms to this theory. A survey of Dutch practice would moreover also allow of comparisons with that in other States parties to the Convention.

The events in this world consist of a rather confused complex of facts, opinions and comments, in which truth and falsehood can hardly be distinguished. Factual information is, however, a prerequisite for an impartial and frank appreciation of these matters. It is above all in international politics that opposed versions of the facts often make a clear view of the situation impossible.

Scientific enquiry has shown that no branch of law can be attributed to a supernatural, natural or any other cause detached from the economic design of society. The concept of positive law is variously interpreted: It is spoken of as a man-made system; as a law applied to and respected by man; as an inevitable consequence of every superior authority and an element intrinsic to its functions; as a law arising out of the competence of only some of the organs of state and as one medium of expression of the will of states. Positive law is held to be based on either formally recorded enactments or on unwritten accepted practices. It is considered to be a category of conduct applied to and observed within the frameworks of individual social groupings described as states (domestic law), or to some or all of these groupings collectively (international law). But whatever the concept applied to positive law, every single interpretation suggested affirms that it is, and has never been anything but, a socio-historic phenomenon evolved and shaped over the course of time out of the crucible of human behaviour and is in a perpetual state of flux.

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.