If, as Lao-tse said, nature is not anthropomorphic, some fellow creatures nonetheless seem to share the better angels of our character; among these animals, none is grander than the African elephant. Elephants live in close-knit “families” of about ten members that seem to do just about everything synchronously—feeding, walking, resting, drinking or mud wallowing. Each unit has a matriarchal structure: it is headed by the oldest female and consists of younger females and their calves, as male calves tend to leave the family and strike out on their own when they reach sexual maturity between the ages of 10 and 15. Fighting is rare.

To what extent are international legal rules formally applicable, and practically relevant, to a prolonged military occupation? The question has assumed prominence because of the exceptional duration of the occupation by Israel of various territories that came under its control in the war of June 5–10, 1967. The situation there has had two classic features of a military occupation: first, a formal system of external control by a force whose presence is not sanctioned by international agreement; and second, a conflict of nationality and interest between the inhabitants, on the one hand, and those exercising power over them, on the other. In highlighting these features, the Palestinian uprising, or intifada, which began in Gaza and the West Bank in December 1987, has added urgency to the question of the law applicable to prolonged occupations.

The Iran-United States Claims Tribunal has been called “the most significant arbitral body in history”; its awards, “a gold mine of information for perceptive lawyers.” In a recent international commercial arbitration, however, an arbitrator reportedly stated that decisions of the Tribunal, although on point, were not persuasive because the Tribunal, after all, involves a special type of arbitration. This arbitrator is not alone. A lecturer at the Hague Academy of International Law, speaking on international commercial arbitration, reportedly did not refer to the Tribunal’s jurisprudence because he did not find it relevant to his work for the same reason. Viewed as a gigantic experiment in international dispute resolution rather than merely a claims settlement device for this particular group of disputes, the Tribunal thus appears (at least to some) to yield decisions of unclear precedential value. Millions of dollars have been spent on its operation and hundreds of awards rendered, yet an apparently not uncommon perception is that the work of this, in some respects unique, institution is not applicable elsewhere.

So mocked the Honorable John Crosbie in the Canadian House of Commons in 1982 before he became the Canadian government minister with responsibility for the Canada-France negotiations respecting St. Pierre and Miquelon.

A common assumption underlying nearly every book or essay on the global environment is that the present generation owes a duty to generations yet unborn to preserve the diversity and quality of our planet’s life-sustaining environmental resources. This duty is sometimes said to be an emerging norm of customary international law, including the more recently treaty-generated custom of the “common heritage of mankind.” Professor Edith Brown Weiss lists three different approaches one might take in response to an asserted environmental obligation to future generations: the “opulent” model, which denies any such obligation and permits present extravagance and waste; the “preservationist” model at the other extreme, which requires the present generation to make substantial sacrifices of denial so as to enhance the environmental legacy; and the “equality” model—favored by Professor Weiss—which says we owe to future generations a global environment in no worse condition than the one we enjoy.

We read every day about the desecration of our environment and the mismanagement of our natural resources. We have always had the capacity to wreck the environment on a small or even regional scale. Centuries of irrigation without adequate drainage in ancient times converted large areas of the fertile Tigris-Euphrates valley into barren desert. What is new is that we now have the power to change our global environment irreversibly, with profoundly damaging effects on the robustness and integrity of the planet and the heritage that we pass to future generations.

In recent years, lawyers have begun to join ecologists in debating whether there are—or should be—obligations to protect the interests of future generations. This legal debate was preceded by a philosophical one, dating back to the early 1970s, on the emergence of a new or “ecological” ethic redefining the relationship between man and nature in such a way as to ensure the survival of the human species on earth. The background to the various ethical approaches has been the indisputable fact that humanity has accumulated a monstrous potential to destroy life on earth, and that it is using natural resources and the environment in a way that threatens the survival of future generations—at least, at a standard that we today consider worthy of human beings.

The material in this section is arranged according to the system employed in the annual Digest of United States Practice in International Law, published by the Department of State.

This treaty between the (East) German Democratic Republic and Hungary concerning visa requirements was deposited with the United Nations in accordance with Article 102 of the UN Charter. When the Government of Hungary decided to permit East Germans visiting Hungary to emigrate to the Federal Republic of Germany (West), the authorities in Budapest informed the East German authorities that the treaty had become inoperative. Among the reasons cited was its inconsistency with the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, to which Hungary had acceded on March 14, 1989.