“The primary aim of development [is] to satisfy man's spiritual and material needs in the context of respect for human rights”. The majority of the Commission on Human Rights of the United Nations, in making this pronouncement, held that “a development strategy based on political repression and the denial of human rights might contribute to the realization of some economic objectives but could never lead to full and genuine development”. They noted the importance of participation both in the process and benefits of development. These statements contrast with a presumption widely held among economists, philosophers, and politicians, that respecting fundamental human rights, especially individual political and civil rights, is somehow incompatible with rapid economic development. Until fairly recently, it was assumed by a preponderance of Western and other development strategists that the benefits of economic growth would sooner or later trickle down to the poor majority in Third World countries, provided that sufficient wealth was generated; it was implicitly assumed that in these circumstances, “human rights would look after itself”. “In many respects the achievement of specific development objectives and of respect for human rights has been foiled by the failure of the trickle-down theory”.

The Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III) has found great difficulty in codifying the international customary rules governing the delimitation of the sea-bed boundaries. The latest draft of the future convention on the law of the sea is the revised Informal Composite Negotiating Text (ICNT Rev/1), which was debated at the ninth session of UNCLOS HI during March 3 – April 4, 1980. Article 83 of the ICNT Rev/1 provides that the delimitation of the continental shelf should be effected by agreement in accordance with equitable principles, employing where appropriate, the median or equidistant line, and taking account of all relevant circumstances. Furthermore, Article 83(2) of the ICNT Rev/1 states that if no final agreement can be reached within a reasonable period of time, the States concerned should resort to the compulsory procedures provided for in the Part XV. However, Article 298(a) of the ICNT Rev/1 states that disputes concerning sea boundary delimitation between opposite and adjacent States constitute one of the exceptions whereby the party States may declare themselves free from compulsory procedure.

Treaty interpretation is a matter of legal methodology, a comprehensive notion embracing a great variety of subjects. In the Diagram published together with this study, the present writer gives his own view of legal methodology as applied to international law. The “legal process” as shown therein is a complicated one, certain parts of which have been examined in earlier studies, viz., the principles of rational organization, the recognized manifestations of international law, and the existence of a hierarchy among them. Treaty interpretation as dealt with, here, belongs to the wide category of problems designated in the Diagram as those of the ascertainment of the content (meaning, message) of the recognized manifestations of international law. For reasons/which, it is hoped, will become clear in the following pages, it is important to place treaty interpretation and the whole of ascertainment of content in the context of methodology generally, not isolated from the other questions involved in the application of recognized manifestations or from the problems surrounding the latter, such as the doctrine of “sources”. As to the link between the present subject and that of the ascertainment of the content of recognized manifestations other than treaties, it is readily agreed that doctrinal treatment of the former would gain by a contrasting sketch of the latter, but since the present study already exceeds the limits of the habitual article, this writer has to forego what otherwise would be a legitimate pursuit.

At p. 10 supra, it was proposed to limit the use of the term “interpretation” to the written manifestations of law, i.e., to treaty (as defined in Article 2, paragraph 1(a), of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties), certain decisions of international organizations, and certain judicial decisions. The present study is concerned with the interpretation of treaties only. With regard to unwritten agreements (not coming under the said definition of treaty), it remains to be seen whether the methods and rules of interpretation also apply to them.

The present article deals with the fate of the 1976 Chlorides and Chemical Pollutants Conventions concluded by the riparian states of the Rhine and in the case of the latter Convention also by the EEC. It further analyzes the decision of 8 January 1979 taken by the District Court of Rotterdam in the case of certain Dutch horticulturists and the Dutch Stichting ‘Reinwater’ against the French Mines Domaniales de Potasse d'Alsace.

The author pleads that the Dutch Government institute proceedings against France before the I.C.J. considering the fact that the French Government refused to ratify the 1976 Chlorides Convention and the fact that the proceedings at present taking place before the Dutch Courts will not lead to a diminuition of the salt-load of the Rhine.

Today, a growing number of states are looking to nuclear power to meet their future energy needs. The technologies involved are also capable of use for military purposes. Hence the global concern to limit the spread of nuclear weapons without, at the same time, impeding the development of peaceful applications of nuclear power. The Parker Report concerning the application by British Nuclear Fuels Ltd to build a reprocessing plant at Windscale highlights the problems, legal, political and moral, that attempts to reconcile these twin aims give rise to. This article, after analysing the Report's treatment of the non-proliferation question, considers the wider international legal implications of the decision to permit the building of the plant, with particular reference to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the anti-proliferation policies of the Carter Administration in the United States.

(a) The subject matter of this report is the recognition of foreign companies and bodies corporate as an issue of private international law. It deals with the two main aspects of the problem, i.e., that of the connecting factors for the recognition of companies and bodies corporate as such and that of the law that governs the personal law of the company or body.

The Asser Institute has asked me to speak in English, here in The Hague before a Dutch audience. Permit me to linger for a moment over this phenomenon.

On 19 December 1978 the Dutch Government was informally requested by the UN Secretary-General to provide an infantry battalion for the UN peace-keeping force in Lebanon within the shortest possible time. France had decided to remove about half its UNIFIL contingent. On 12 January 1979 the Dutch Cabinet decided to inform the Secretary-General that, should he make an official request, the Government was willing to give a positive response.

It was these events that gave rise to a sequence of not less than five judicial decisions on the question whether conscripts could be posted to the Lebanon without their consent. Answering this question involved aspects of municipal as well as international law.

The survey is accompanied with the author's comments if necessary.

The recognition of foreign companies is a much debated issue. The exact meaning of ‘recognition’, the conflict rules by which the law of the company is determined, the limits within which national company law can still be applied to foreign companies, all these questions have been and still are the subject of lively discussion in academic writing. The same holds true for the EEC Convention on Mutual Recognition (hereafter Recognition Convention) upon which there has already been extensive, and often critical, comment. What has been rather neglected in this debate is the relationship between the Recognition Convention and the law of the European Communities. The report is mainly devoted to this subject (Chapter I).

The Civil Code of Quebec was enacted in 1866. It codified the then existing law which was largely of French origin. The Code was modelled on the French Civil Code but to the three books into which that Code was divided was added a fourth book dealing with commercial law. In this respect, therefore, the French tradition of a separate commercial code was not followed. The codification was regarded as an affirmation of French legal culture in the face of the growing threat of a penetration by English law. Nevertheless, both in the codification stage and in the subsequent evolution of the law, concessions were made to the English legal system. For instance, the trust was introduced into the Civil Code. Again, the fact that final appeals from decisions of the Quebec courts could be brought before courts which were dominated by English-trained judges contributed to the penetration of English legal concepts.1 For instance, these courts applied English ways of interpreting statutes to the construction of Code provisions. On the whole, Quebec courts tried to resist these tendencies and to preserve as far as possible the French character of the legal system. They were hampered, however, in these efforts because they were compelled to accept the English view that decisions of the superior courts constituted binding precedents.

The scope and emotion of the discussion concerning transnational corporations suggest that some more basic problems are at its roots, such as the discrepancy between the legal equality and sovereignty of states and their actual inequality and dependence; the hegemony of the North and the distress of the South, the many-layered interdependence and the groping, but palpable, steps toward a new world economic order; the relationship between the state and the private economy in the home and the host states of transnational corporations; or the question whether private social power is bad per se and tends to corrupt, and whether the power of transnational corporations equals the sudden change from the quantity to the quality.

Unfortunately, I could not be present, when Verheul publicly assumed his professorship at Leyden University on 26 May 1978, as the successor of W.L.G. Lemaire (1907–1976), so that I only know his address from the printed text. It is highly original, comprehensive, striking owing to many turns of thought of such a nature as will no doubt be unexpected for many readers, and it stimulates further thought about practically everything which he wanted to say – here and there in the form of a cry from his very heart.

Little is known about the law of prize applied in Holland and Zealand before a Court of Admiralty was established in 1488. Even as regards the functioning of this institution, the so-called ‘Admiralty of Vere’, our knowledge is scanty. Yet, the prize law of the Low Countries in the 15th and 16th centuries is not an unimportant subject for research. It is certain that precedents from this period had a considerable influence on Dutch practice after 1572, i.e., during the Republic's war against Spain. Even though the subject of prize law proper has been rather neglected in the otherwise well-studied ‘Golden Age’ of Dutch history, it is evident that the Dutch Republic, a first-rate maritime power, did much to shape important rules of International Law, such as the famous maxims that “blockades must be effective” and that “free ships make free goods”. Obviously, it would be interesting to uncover the historical roots of these much-debated principles of the International Law of maritime warfare. Moreover, an added zest is given to the study of Dutch prize law by its inevitable association with Grotius. His De Jure Praedae, in spite of its promising title, reveals less about Grotius' historical studies than De Jure Belli ac Pads in which a 1438 decision of the Court of Holland concerning the treatment of neutrals is twice quoted.

The first launchings of satellites into orbit around the Earth by the USSR and the USA resulted in the establishment in 1962 of the European Space Research Organisation (ESRO) and the European Organisation for the Development and Construction of Space Vehicle Launchers (ELDO), both of which have their headquarters in Paris. The Conventions for the establishment of these organisations came into force in 1964 and are registered with the Secretary-General of the United Nations.