In George H. Sabine's great work, A History of Political Thought, he makes the following overall judgment on Grotius’ writing:

“Grotius' importance in the history of jurisprudence rests not upon a theory of the state or upon anything that he had to say about constitutional law, but upon his conception of a law regulating the relations between the sovereign states.”

Hall's statement, widely quoted by writers on State succession, has retained a good deal of its validity. From Grotius to O'Connell, a long series of distinguished publicists have attempted to throw light upon the doctrinal obscurity of the problem. Many of them have displayed remarkable juristic imagination, but have also shown a regrettable lack of precision and discipline. In their justification, however, it must be conceded that the abundant judicial and diplomatic practice on State succession has always been—and still is—contradictory and obscure.

On the night of Sunday 27—Monday 28 April 1958, the curtain fell on a diplomatic performance on the Geneva scene which had lasted for nine weeks: the Conference on the Law of the Sea. Driving back to the hotel from the Palais des Nations one could not help comparing the result of this Conference held under the aegis of the United Nations with the corresponding section of its predecessor of 1930 at The Hague, organised by the League of Nations, and being struck by two parallels and two differences. The two Conferences had in common that they had both been thoroughly prepared legally, and that it proved impossible to reach any agreement on one of the fundamental questions discussed, viz. the breadth of the territorial sea. But they differed in that, as far as the law of the sea was concerned, the Geneva Conference covered a much wider field than that of The Hague as it dealt not only with the territorial sea but also with the high seas and the continental shelf, and that they drew different conclusions from their failure to reach agreement on the breadth of the territorial sea, because while the Conference of 1930 ended with no convention at all concerning this subject, its successor of 1958 adopted one in spite of the important gaps left. The Conference of 1958 was moreover attended by a much larger number of States.

An examination of the practice of United Nations organs, including the International Court of Justice, discloses no rules requiring a party who invokes an international agreement before any of those organs to show compliance with Article 102. Nor have we found any instance in which an organ has imposed the penalty of Article 102(2) or in which a party has urged it to do so. This is not to say that no United Nations organ has ever been confronted with an agreement that required registration but which had not been registered. A number of the contentious cases before the International Court presented just such a situation. As will appear from the discussion of cases which follows, the instances in which it can be said that the Court gave effect to such unregistered agreements all involved so-called Special Agreements by which, under Article 36 of the Court's Statute, parties may bring their cases before the Court. This raises the questions whether the Court considers such agreements to be outside the scope of Article 102, and if so, why.

The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is founded upon certain values and institutions common to the legal systems of all the Contracting States. In the absence of such common values and institutions the attempt to create generally applicable guidelines for the balancing of the rights of individuals against the general interest will run into difficulties.

On 7 July 1989 the European Court of Human Rights reached a landmark decision in the case of Jens Soering. In the case of a pending extradition, the requested State, a party to the European Convention on Human Rights, violated Article 3 of the Convention if the fugitive, after surrender, faced the real risk of being subjected to ‘inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’.

On 4th October, 1957, a man-made machine forche first time overrode the age old law proclaiming that everything that goes up must come down. Fifteen months later a means was developed of circumventing the earth's attraction. In September, 1959, the moon was reached and on 12th April, 1961, Major Gagarin orbited the Earth in a space capsule. In the short period of four years man's advance in space has been more rapid than the most sanguine forecaster has dared to predict, and it is now realized that a new phase in the history of mankind of exploration and development has begun in some ways comparable to, but vastly exceeding these in scope, the conquest of the sea and the air. Nobody can visualize the impact the conquest of space is going to have on life on this planet, but it becomes clearer every day that a process of change has started more profound and more sweeping than any which has overtaken the world since the foundation of the modern world.

La conception très répandue, voire mêrae classique, que Grotius est le père du Droit des Gens, n'a pas empêché la science de ce droit, tout en proclamant que Grotius est à sa base, de s'éloigner singulièrement de lui, et ceci au sujet de matières très importantes. Cette évolution de la science trouve sa contrepartie dans le fait que l'évolution du droit international lui-même semble obliger la science à retourner vers son fondateur.

The elaboration of international legal standards relating to the status of women in the Commission on the Status of Women has led to an increased interest within the Commission with the problem of the implementation of these principles for, as Landy states:

“the adoption of international legislation and its formal acceptance by a growing number of countries cannot, by themselves, add to the stability of inter-State relations, unless there also exists some degree of assurance that the contracting parties really comply with their obligations…”

This article addresses the issue of whether the international criminal tribunals are under an obligation to fund family visits for indigent detainees. It examines the concept of positive obligations and its relation to the detention situation and describes the practice of funding family visits as it has developed at the International Criminal Court. It further analyses relevant developments in the Court's case law. It argues that the Court is indeed obliged to fund family visits. In this regard, the mere recognition of a detainee's right to family visits in the tribunals’ legal frameworks and in international soft-law penological standards can be said to inadequately reflect the particularities of international detention.

The object of this article is to consider whether the ownership of expropriated property of aliens also passes to the expropriating state if the expropriation purporting to be nationalisation is not accompanied by compensation. It deals only with property (including enterprises) located within the territory of the nationalising state and belonging to aliens. The appropriation by governmental agencies of (enemy) property during or in connection with a war will not be discussed.

There are refugees and stateless persons. Some stateless persons are refugees and some refugees are stateless. They all lack proper protection. Often, stateless persons can be considered as refugees, as they might have “a well founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, and are unwilling or unable to avail themselves of the protection of … the country of habitual residence”. Refugees who are not stateless are those who for the above mentioned reasons are unable or unwilling to avail themselves of the protection of the country of their nationality. A difference is sometimes made between de jure and de facto stateless persons. It is better to speak about de jure and de facto unprotected persons. Generally, refugees are de facto unprotected and stateless persons are de jure unprotected. It would moreover seem more appropriate to concentrate on the protection aspect, as nationality can be related to various forms of protection. In this respect the difference between “unable” and “unwilling” should be stressed: stateless persons are normally unable to invoke any protection, while asylum-seekers with a nationality are normally unwilling to avail themselves of the protection of their country of nationality. It is taken for granted that the relationship between a country and its citizens involves ‘protection’ in whatever form that may be.

The article deals with Security Council Resolution 1540 (2004), of 28 April 2004. In it the Council, acting under Chapter VII of the Charter to keep weapons of mass destruction away from terrorists, imposed obligations on states. Brief observations on the concept of legislation are followed by comments on instances of near legislation by the Council and on Resolution 1373 (2001), of 28 September 2001, in which the Council, reacting under Chapter VII, and unanimously to the dreadful terrorist attacks of the 11th of that month, took measures fully comparable to legislation. Resolution 1373 (2001) imposed on states rules and principles already sanctioned by the General Assembly, which ties in with the lack of any trace of the preparatory work on the resolution, adopted so to speak instantaneously. In contrast, Resolution 1540 (2004), which imposed on states entirely new rules, arose from a protracted and officially mentioned process of private consultations leading to two open Security Council meetings, at which many states commented on the draft resolution under consideration, questioning its constitutionality and pointing to problems of interpretation and application it raised. Those issues, which did not prevent the unanimous adoption of Resolution 1540 (2004), are the main topic of the article.