On January 11, 1957, the United States rejected a request of the Government of Switzerland to submit the Interhandel controversy to arbitration or conciliation in conformity with the provisions of the United States-Swiss Treaty of Arbitration and Conciliation of February 16, 1931. The refusal to submit the controversy to arbitration was declared to be “on the ground that the matter does not involve a dispute falling within the scope of the obligation to have recourse to arbitration” and the refusal to comply with the conciliation provisions of the treaty was on the ground that they “would necessarily be unproductive.”

The purported nationalization of the Universal Company of the Suez Maritime Canal by the Egyptian Decree of July 26, 1956, refreshed the interest of the international community in the long-lingering dispute over restrictions imposed by Egypt on the passage of cargoes bound for Israeli ports and the prohibition of the passage of Israeli ships through the Suez Canal.

No international institution of general scope can continue its normal functioning in a period of a great world upheaval, and any international institution for the preservation of law and order must find its activities circumscribed at such a time. The Permanent Court of International Justice was no exception to the rule.

All writers commencing with Grotius say that the names of instruments embraced in the genus treaty have little, if any, legal significance. All who mention the matter say that some instruments are more important in international relations than others, and that “treaty” or “convention” is at the top of the list of some three dozen words that are used to describe such instruments. All agree that treaties generically have the characteristic of legally recording what the parties have agreed to, and, beyond that, all hedge on completing a definition. Few writers attempt to draw a line between treaties and legal obligations that are not treaties. In one way or another writers are accustomed to say that names are assigned to treaties idiosyncratically, at the whim of the draftsmen or by chance.