The purpose of this article is to inquire what is requisite to bind the state to an international engagement. We might ask what is the international effect of constitutional limitations on the power to make treaties, thus coming directly to the most controverted aspect of the problem. But there are also less formal agreements, as well as unilateral acts, all falling within one great category of negotia juris whose common characteristic is that they express the will of a state or states. In the following discussion we shall say simply “act,” meaning thereby an official act whose purpose is to create, alter, or extinguish rights in international law.

One of the methods by which National Socialist Germany hoped to win the war consisted of the deportation of non-Germans, mainly citizens of occupied territories, as a labor force in support of the German war effort. The hope was not fulfilled but this policy, carried out on an enormous scale, enabled the Third Reich to wage war much more ruthlessly and for a much longer period than would have been possible otherwise. With hostilities ended and their lands devastated, several of the United Nations now intend to obtain at least partial reparation of the damage caused to them by transferring Germans as a labor force for reconstruction work.

Ordinarily we speak of an empire as a state governed by an emperor, as for instance, the two Napoleonic Empires in France. But in a broader and more modern sense, an empire is a powerful state which has wide and supreme dominion over extensive and outlying territories and countries inhabited by peoples usually of a different race, historical background and civilization. In this manner, we speak of an imperialistic nation when the policy of that nation, whatever its form of government, aims to create for itself a position of dominance and control over backward, weaker or helpless nations, territories or peoples.

Our understanding of human trafficking has changed significantly since 2000, when the international community adopted the first modern antitrafficking treaty—the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (Trafficking Protocol). Policy attention has expanded beyond a near-exclusive focus on sex trafficking to bring long-overdue attention to nonsexual labor trafficking. That attention has helped surface how the lack of international laws and institutions pertaining to labor migration can enable—if not encourage—the exploitation of migrant workers. Many migrant workers throughout the world labor under conditions that do not qualify as trafficking yet suffer significant rights violations for which access to protection and redress is limited. Failing to attend to these “lesser” abuses creates and sustains vulnerability to trafficking.

International law, as it appears in the pages of the American Journal of International Law, is largely public international law. Conflict of laws is usually considered to be either outside international law or part of private international law. This symposium in AJIL Unbound, with its focus on the Restatement of the Law (Third) Conflict of Laws, is therefore noteworthy. It also is welcome, because there is much to gain from thinking about conflict of laws and international law together.

Assessments of the relationship between trade agreements and the climate regime often focus on the potential for normative conflict. Concerns that trade commitments may prevent the adoption of measures to curb climate change, or at least that these are two regimes that “point in different directions,”1 are often voiced to suggest that taking climate action requires fundamentally modifying, and maybe getting rid of, current trade agreements. In this essay, we argue that allegations of conflict disregard longstanding World Trade Organization (WTO) jurisprudence on policy-justified trade measures. As a matter of principle, this alleged conflict has been essentially overcome since the 1998 Appellate Body report in United States – Shrimp.2 Focusing on potential conflict distracts from the real challenges and dilemmas involved in designing and implementing a global carbon regime, including through the trade instruments known as carbon border adjustment mechanisms (CBAMs and so-called “climate clubs”), for which the legal parameters provided by trade agreements may be instrumental.

In his essay on the “Uniting for Peace” resolution, Larry Johnson suggests that the General Assembly can recommend non-use of force collective measures when the Security Council is blocked because of a permanent member casting a veto. He rightly points out that today there is no longer any need to use Uniting for Peace for such recommendations. The General Assembly can and has recommended so-called “voluntary sanctions” in cases where it found a threat to international peace and security to exist. For example, in resolution 2107 (XX) of December 21, 1965 concerning the Question of Territories under Portuguese Administration, the Assembly, making no reference to Uniting for Peace, urged “Member States to take the following measures, separately or collectively:

1. (a) To break off diplomatic and consular relations with the Government of Portugal or refrain from establishing such relations;

2. (b) To close their ports to all vessels flying the Portuguese flag or in the service of Portugal;

3. (c) To prohibit their ships from entering any ports in Portugal and its colonial territories;

4. (d) To refuse landing and transit facilities to all aircraft belonging to or in the service of the Government of Portugal and to companies registered under the laws of Portugal;

5. (e) To boycott all trade with Portugal.”

At the Conference on the Limitation of Armaments at Washington in 1921 one of the subjects considered at the request of the Chinese delegation was a proposal that the Western Powers give up their extraterritorial rights in China. This led to the adoption by the conference at its ninth meeting on November 29th of a declaration that the Western nations “ are prepared to relinquish extraterritorial rights when satisfied that the state of Chinese laws, the arrangement for their administration and other considerations warrant them in doing so.” This was doubtless a great gratification to the Chinese delegates, but the foreigner in China may have experienced less satisfaction at the menace therein involved to a system which tens of thousands of foreign residents in China regard as the sine qua non of their welfare.

The growing tendency towards international arbitration brings into special consideration and importance the relation between the jurisdiction of national courts of justice and international tribunals of arbitration.

When one nation urges claims in behalf of its citizens upon the government of another nation and proposes arbitration, how far doea that other nation’s respect for its own independent sovereignty and for the integrity of its own judicial system require it to insist that the claims be submitted for final decision to its own national courts?

The true basis for the consideration of this question is in the nature oi the obligation which constrains a nation to submit questions to any tribunal whatever.

The twelfth convention adopted by the Hague Conference of 1907 provides for the establishment of an International Prize Court to which appeals may be carried in certain instances from the prize courts of the captors. The proposal for such a convention was presented very early in the proceedings of the conference.

British Honduras, or Belize, has a diplomatic history at once notable and obscure. Bordered by the Mexican State of Quintana Roo, the Republic of Guatemala and the Caribbean Sea, this British Colony has an area of 8,598 square miles and is thus a little larger than Wales or Massachusetts.

On June 20, 1994, Ambassador Harriet C. Babbit, the U.S. Permanent Representative to the Organization of American States, deposited on behalf of the U.S. Government the instrument of ratification of the “Protocol of Washington,” adopted on December 14, 1992, by the Sixteenth Special Session of the General Assembly of the Organization of American States and signed by the United States on January 23, 1993, and the “Protocol of Managua,” adopted by the Nineteenth Special Session of the OAS General Assembly on June 10, 1993, and signed that day by the United States. The U.S. Senate had given its advice and consent to ratification of the Protocols on May 17, 1994, with two-thirds of the Senators present and concurring.

The power to make treaties with other nations is an inherent attribute of the sovereign power of an independent nation.

Where the treaty-making power is exercised by the sovereign power of a nation, the right to treat with other nations rests wholly in sovereignty and extends to every question pertaining to international relations.

Where, however, the treaty-making power is not exercised by the sovereign power of the nation as a whole, but has been delegated to a branch of the government by which it is exercised in a representative capacity, the treaty-making power there, although it arises from sovereignty, rests in grant, and can be exercised only to the extent of and in accordance with the terms fixed by the grant.

So in the United States, where the people, as the sovereign power, have delegated through the medium of their State conventions or State legislatures the treaty-making power to a designated section of the Federal Government under the Constitution, such power rests in grant and is to be measured and exercised under the terms of such grant.