The ultimate authority of the International Court of Justice flows from the same source as the ultimate authority of all other judicial bodies. Every court’s decisions are an authoritative source of law in a realistic sense only because they are accepted as such by the community whose controversies the court is charged to resolve. In the case of the World Court, it is the community of nations that confers that authority and under the Court’s Statute, its jurisdiction is conferred solely by the consent of the nations whose disputes it is called to adjudicate. It is for this reason that the case Nicaragua v. United States and the actions of both the Court and the United States Government in connection with it are of special importance to those who are concerned with international law.

The peace conference held at Paris in 1919 was called upon to consider no question of wider political or economic significance than that of the ordering of navigation on those great rivers usually designated as international and of which the Danube affords one of the most striking examples. In the long progress of 1800 miles from its source eastwards to the Black Sea this river traverses or bounds the territory of eight extensive states displaying a route capable of beneficial exploitation on the part of every country in Europe. Rising on the easterly slope of the Black Forest hill region in the extreme south of Baden, where it is formed by the union at Donaueschingen of two small streams flowing southerly from points near Villingen and Furtwangen, the Danube pursues a general easterly course across Wurtemberg and Bavaria. At Ulm it is joined by the Iller and now becomes navigable.

Regardless of what we may think of the Treaty of Versailles, we must admit that it contains indications of farsightedness and broad vision. Among these I include the Covenant of the League of Nations and the clauses relating to international rivers and international labor laws. But even apart from these groups of laws and regulations, the provisions of the treaty which aim to submit disputes arising out of an especially important part of the treaty to international arbitration constitute, from the point of view of international law and considered in an abstract way—that is, only with reference to their creation and their significance for the development of international law and international arbitration—a real accomplishment, the fulfilment of wishes expressed even before the war by such scholars as von Bar, Meurer, Wehberg and Ludwig Wertheimer. At the same time the creation of the arbitral courts in the sense of Part X, Section VI, confirms the fact that the tendency toward arbitral settlement of such disputes even as arise from treaties of peace, to which I already called attention before the war, has not been abandoned on account of the war. This was proved by the German treaties with the Eastern countries and is now again indicated by the Treaty of Versailles.

In the prewar period the principle appeared widely accepted that a new state is not bound by any treaty of its predecessor with the possible exception of a treaty locally connected with its territory. In view of the practice which seems to have changed since then, the appropriateness of this principle as a statement of the general rule is open to question. Some authoritative studies on the practice of several international organizations in relation to state succession indicate a recent tendency to recognize that it is desirable to make provision for the stability and continuity of relationships under general multilateral treaties when new states are formed. A body of the practice of GATT not yet covered by such studies seems to merit special attention mainly for two reasons: first, GATT has developed certain devices whereby both the community interest in maintaining the continuity of multilateral treaty relations and the particular interest of new states in asserting and exercising their freedom as to treaty relations should well be accommodated; and secondly, these devices seem to be susceptible of adoption by other international organizations. The present study seeks to examine how these devices have evolved through the practice of GATT, and attempts an evaluation by pointing out their imperfections as well as notable utility.

The need for an international criminal jurisdiction was recognized by the General Assembly of the United tjations in a resolution adopted in 1948, in which it was stated in the preamble thalt “in the course of development of the international community, there will be an increasing need of an international judicial organ for the trial of certain crimes under international law.”

The recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that Madam Rosika Schwimmer, avowed “ uncompromising pacifist,” is not eligible to become a citizen of the United States has focused attention upon our naturalization laws and their judicial construction. Especial interest has been aroused in those provisions which prescribe the qualifications concerning the applicant's attachment to the principles of the Constitution of the United States.

At first sight, the question that Dan Efrony and Yuval Shany ask in their article, A Rule Book on the Shelf?, makes sense. If a group of lawyers writes a legal manual for state legal advisors, the logical follow-up question would indeed be, do they use it? Do these “black-letter rules,” as the Manual itself terms them, actually “provid[e] international law advice” to states operating in cyberspace? Given the Manual's own claim that its “effort [is] to examine how extant legal norms apply” to cyber warfare, one may indeed wonder whether states have used the Manual as intended—as a manual.