The International Court of Justice, in its two successive guises, has on several occasions already had to deal with cases in which its own jurisdiction in the dispute brought before it was at issue. In nearly every instance when its jurisdiction to take cognizance of the merits of a case was challenged, the proceedings were divided, according to a provision in the Court's Rules of Procedure now embodied in Article 62, into a preliminary and a final phase, although such a division is not obligatory in the sense that the defendant party retains its freedom to raise its objections to the Court's jurisdiction not as a preliminary but simultaneously with its defence on the merits.

The development of nation States has led to a growing importance of nationality, to the expansion of the services provided by the State and to an improvement in the status of persons working in the public service. Each of these developments in the past provided grounds for the idea that only individuals possessing the nationality of the State could perform tasks in the public service.

The market impact of the Convention on civil litigation in the six original Member States was a matter of concern with several speakers. It was stressed in particular that the mere solution of jurisdictional problems may require extensive research of substantive issues, which possibly could lead to litigation at three national levels. If the possibility of submitting preliminary questions under the 1971 Protocol to the EC Court at Luxemburg is also taken into account, five judgments could even be required to settle the question which court in the Common Market is competent. Although perhaps inspiring lawyers' intellectual efforts, this situation would unfortunately increase the litigation costs to the parties. Moreover, the final text of the EC Draft on the law applicable to contractual and non-contractual obligations is progressing and the EC Court will be charged with ensuring the uniform interpretation of this convention as well. One can imagine questions being put to the European Court in each of the three stages of a dispute, viz., the jurisdiction phase, the applicable law, and the enforcement in another Member State.

The purpose of this lecture is to identify and investigate two things: (1) the centre of the intellectual activity described in its title as the defining and development of international law, and (2) the fundamental concept around which both defining and development revolve. The centre as indicated will be found to consist of (representatives of) what is to be called the three “legal archetypes”. The fundamental concept alluded to is the “normative concept of law”. The two notions are, of course, highly abstract as compared to the realities they are designed to help understand. They will be set forth as clearly as possible within the strict limits of this lecture, although it is realized that a truly satisfactory treatment cannot be imagined outside a full-size methodology. An apology beforehand is, therefore, in place. One particular question relating to the normative concept of law in international relations will be dealt with in some detail: it has to do with “tragedy in law” as resulting from the clash between competing normative concepts. As a final observation, the need for a maximum degree of flexibility in the international lawyer's way of thought will be stressed.

The current transformation process of the American conflict of laws system from a traditional “hard-and-fast” body of jurisdiction-selecting rules to a modern method of functional analysis has raised a widespread wave of interested, diverse and, more often than not, critical reactions. Criticism to the new approach is particularly strong outside the United States and especially in the civil law countries where a certain number of established scholars tend to reject the functional methods as a rudely disguised way of always applying the forum law. Be that as it may –and a closer first hand examination of its doctrinal and jurisprudential sources may discover that the functional analysis is indeed an intelligent and sophisticated method of dealing with choice of laws problems—the fact is that American courts are increasingly applying the language and the substance of the new approach to solve both interstate and international conflicts. The following selective examination of some of these latter cases permits us to illustrate how the functional analysis actually works in practice and to evaluate to what extent this new approach might also be operative as a method of solving international conflict of laws.

War zones have long ceased to be a novelty, but they remain a legal enigma. Although existing for almost a century, the issue remains unsettled, feeding prolonged legal speculation. The question of the legality of war zones typifies the kind of legal controversies with which a potential codification attempt for the laws of naval warfare will have to cope. The problem arises when an antiquated body of law intersects proliferating State practice which runs contrary to its dictates, when new realities come to upset fundamental principles of humanitarian law.

In the following pages I intend to survey the judgments of the International Court of Justice pronounced in the course of 1959.

Owing to the differing degrees of importance from the legal point of view of the individual cases dealt with, their discussion will necessarily vary in length and thoroughness.

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.

It is sometimes argued that States who do not want to see the legal regime concerning nuclear weapons altered, will have, for precisely that reason, serious difficulties in ratifying the 1977 Protocol additional to the Geneva Convention of 12 August 1949, especially Protocol I relating to the protection of victims of international armed conflicts.