The question whether decisions of English courts dealing with points of international law should be regarded as binding precedents has never been authoritatively decided. One view regards a rule of international law, once incorporated by the decision of an English court, as part of municipal law to which the doctrine of stare decisis must apply in the same manner as to a rule of purely domestic origin. Lord Atkin's famous statement in Chung Chi Cheung v. The King is sometimes put forward as necessitating this conclusion:

“It must be always remembered that, so far, at any rate, as the courts of this country are concerned, international law has no validity save in so far as its principles are accepted and adopted by our domestic law. There is no external power that imposes its rules upon our own code of substantive law or procedure. The courts acknowledge the existence of a body of rules which nations accept amongst themselves. On any judicial issue they seek to ascertain what the relevant rule is, and, having found it, they will treat it as incorporated into the domestic law, so far as it is not inconsistent with rules enacted by statutes or finally declared by their tribunals.”

Whenever the use of comparative law is discussed, the question arises as to whether the phrase encompasses the use of foreign law. In this report comparative law will be taken in a broad sense, to include foreign law. For practical reasons subjects which are not confined to the boundaries of a single system – such as European law, international law and the law of international organisations – will not be covered in this report. For the same reasons no attention will be paid to those branches of legal science, which do not primarily deal with positive law, such as jurisprudence, legal methodology, sociology of the law and criminology.

Outline:***

1. Some indications on the research project of the Universities of Utrecht and Leyden on international economic organisations and legal issues of a new international economic order

2. Some legal characteristics of the existing international economic order

3. What should be new in a new international economic order?

4. The impact of the principle of State sovereignty on a new international economic order

5. Three final remarks

The main purpose of the paper is to investigate the differences between the new international economic order (NIEO) advocated by the overwhelming majority of the members of the General Assembly and the existing order. To what extent are changes called for in the institutional and substantial legal rules that help to mould international economic relations on a world scale? Attention is paid especially to the principles on which these rules are based and to the modifications thereof that would be required for bringing about the NIEO.

Of the more than 140 major cases of armed violence recorded since World War II, which have claimed more victims than that war itself, only relatively few have been ended through the mediation of the United Nations. Moreover, there is no single case in which the United Nations were absolutely instrumental in the prevention of an armed conflict, though in some cases aggression may have been averted in the face of international pressure. This is a disappointing state of affairs for an organisation whose task, according to the Preamble of its Charter, is to ‘save succeeding generations from the scourge of war’. But even if we disregard the lofty wording of the Preamble, the Charter itself in Article 1 places the maintenance of international peace and security first among the aims of the organisation.

The adoption of the Declaration on the Progressive Development of Principles of Public International Law relating to a New International Economic Order (Seoul Declaration) by the 62nd Conference of the International Law Association (ILA) in 1986 set the seal on eight years of hard work by the ILA's Committee on Legal Aspects of a New International Economic Order (NIEO Committee). However, it certainly did not mark the end of the Committee's efforts.

The Netherlands has traditionally supported a three-mile limit for the breadth of the territorial sea. Even when, especially after the Second World War, a large number of states laid claim to territorial sea limits exceeding three miles, the Netherlands continued to adhere to the position that any unilateral extension of the territorial sea to twelve miles or more was inconsistent with international law. This position, which was defended both before and during the First and Second United Nations Conferences on the Law of the Sea (1958 and 1960), was consistent with the dominant Dutch interest at that time, viz., keeping the breadth of the territorial sea to a minimum, with as few exclusive fishing rights as possible beyond this limit.

The People's Republic of China (hereinafter: China) does not have a special statute on private international law. The relevant rules can be found mainly in China's Civil Procedural Law and the General Principles of the Civil Law. The rules of international jurisdiction are included in the former. In Part IV of the Civil Procedural Law entitled ‘Special Provisions for Civil Procedures Involving Foreign Parties’, there is a special chapter that is dedicated to the rules of international jurisdiction. This chapter has altogether four articles, all of which concern international jurisdiction over contract disputes.

The ILA approach to the progressive structuring of international society, so typical of later 19th Century social optimism, has from the very first found a warm advocate in its oldest national branch, the NVIR. The idea to assemble legal luminaries and captains of industry into a single body might not be quite representative of the Dutch, rather compartmentalized, tradition of legal thinking, but even so, the NVIR, after a first abortive attempt in 1875, from its ‘re-launch’ in 1910 invariably met with a thoroughly welcoming intellectual climate in the Netherlands.

Over the past century, the Society's (board) members have not consistently proved themselves visionaries in their anticipation of, or reaction to, social change, be this in the domestic sphere or the international domain. Symptomatic of this were the fairly conservative views they held on such issues as Neutrality or the League of Nations in the 1920s; on the conflict with Indonesia, also regarding New Guinea, in the post-WWII years; on the Benelux experiment and the Schuman Plan in the 1950s; or on the decolonization process in the 1960s.

Even so, in the final analysis, the views represented by the NVIR have invariably been a welcome, indeed fairly refreshing contribution to the Dutch social debate. Also, and in spite of the progressive institutionalization and codification in the international arena auspicated by a wealth of intergovernmental bodies, ILA and the NVIR never did, nor will they presumably, fail in carving a very respectable niche of their own in aspiring to help the implementation of the Rule of Law in this world drawing nearer.

Despite almost universal recognition within the international community of the importance of international environmental law, many complex issues continue to elude an appropriate legal response. A particularly controversial issue – and one that is proving increasingly difficult to resolve – is the question of how to reconcile the principle of environmental protection with that of free trade. Moreover, despite such positive platitudes as that contained within the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, nation states are quickly discovering that the issue is not simply one of abstract interest, but is actually beginning to influence both their domestic and international regulatory behaviour. This article seeks to present a broad overview of this issue as it relates to the European Union (EU) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). In particular, the article will critically discuss some of the more recent jurisprudence on this issue arising from these two, very different, ‘groupings’ of states. As will be noted, there are important similarities and differences between each ‘grouping’ in terms of its approach. And, of course, whilst it is acknowledged that many of these differences can be resolved by reference to the different aims and objectives of the different ‘groupings’, nevertheless, this article will try to move beyond a strictly comparative approach of the issues, and place them in a broader analytical framework. This is not an attempt to show which approach is ‘best’, but rather, to highlight the tensions between environmental protection and free trade.

In September 1958 the Venezuelan Ministry of Justice created a Commission, comprising Professors Roberto Goldschmidt, Gonzalo Parra-Aranguren and Joaquín Sánchez-Covisa, assigning it the task of preparing a Draft on Private International Law. A preliminary document was drawn up after ten months of intensive work, but the Commission decided to reflect on the Draft and it was only in April 1963 when it was completed, with an ‘Explanatory Report’ annexed.

This Special Issue is devoted to the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Second Hague Peace Conference of 1907. The First Hague Peace Conference took place in 1899, upon the initiative of the Russian czar Nicolas II. Its purpose was to elaborate instruments for the peaceful settlement of future serious international disputes, for the prevention of wars and undue increases of military budgets, and for the codification of the rules of warfare. Twenty-six states participated in the 1899 Hague Peace Conference, and it resulted in three main conventions and three declarations relating to the restriction of armaments, the prohibition of the use of certain weapons, the peaceful settlement of international disputes and the laws and customs of war.