The signing of the Constitution for a World Health Organization, on 22 July 1946 in New York City, is likely to be a landmark in the history of international cooperation for public health and medicine. At this ceremony the representatives of sixty-one nations affirmed their intention of bringing all inter-governmental health action under the aegis of a single agency which, it is hoped, will soon embrace the entire family of states. The new “Magna Carta” of health envisages an organization far wider in scope and function than any previous undertaking in this sphere of international collaboration. Still more significant is the new approach to the problem of disease embodied in the WHO Constitution—an approach which takes full cognizance of the revolutionary advances of the past decade in preventive and curative medicine.

The prompt adoption of the Charter of the United Nations by the United States stands in bold relief against the failure to ratify, the Covenant of the League of Nations twenty-five years ago. The causes responsible for the success of the Charter and the failure of the Covenant are probably diverse in character and varying in importance. The indorsement of the Charter by a virtually unanimous vote in the Senate was probably due in no small measure to the decision of the Roosevelt Administration to place the issue of American participation in an international security organization, almost from the very beginning, on a non-partisan basis. The issue, however, was not one of joining an international organization of the Woodrow Wilson type. The vote in the Senate, accordingly, does not necessarily represent a belated conversion to the idealism of Wilson. It would seem, on the contrary, that the Roosevelt Administration, drawing on the rich experience of international cöoperation during the interwar period, and more particularly during World War II, had taken care to keep from the Charter all the important matters to which the majority of the Senate, in voting on the Covenant with the Lodge Reservations on March 19, 1920, had taken exception. It may be that this policy was merely part of an over-all strategy aiming at bringing the United States into some sort of international security organization rather than running the risk of a repetition of the 1919/1920 drama. It may be, on the other hand, that the Roosevelt Administration, together with the other sponsoring governments, had become genuinely convinced that the League Covenant represented a type of international organization which, under the prevailing circumstances, was unattainable or undesirable or unworkable in practice.

The first judicial interpretation of the immunities of staff members of the United Nations is contained in the decision of the City Court of New Eochelle, New York, in the case of County of Westchester on complaint of Walter Donnelly, Complainant, v. William Banollo, Defendant. The opinion in this ease, delivered on November 8, 1946, by Acting City Judge Sol Eubin, also contains the first judicial construction of the International Organization Immunities Act of December 29, 1945, which was designed, in part, to implement the provisions of Articles 104 and 105 of the Charter of the United Nations and any future conventions or agreements which might be concluded pursuant thereto.

Shortly after termination of the now historic Nuremberg trial of Nazi Germany’s arch war criminals, formal proceedings were instituted against several other classes of major offenders against the laws of war in Western Europe. This second phase of the program included war crimes committed in S.S. laboratories, in the name of medical experimentation, and the socalled “economic” war crimes. Simultaneously with these proceedings preparations were made for still a third class of offenders to be brought to international justice, and it is this group which has recently been indicted. Here the charges are predicated upon illegal activity of enemy nationals engaged in administering justice in territories under military occupation, frequently involving the execution of inhabitants after a summary hearing, or after no trial at all. For the international lawyer this third category of war crimes contains many stimulating and significant elements. It raises highly challenging questions as to the extent to which criminal responsibility may be held to exist in cases where enemy nationals performing functions of a judicial or a quasi-judicial character have participated in the pronouncement and execution of sentences, including the death penalty, against nationals of the occupied areas.