The Gulf of Aqaba is a long, narrow body of water on the eastern side of the Sinai Peninsula. The western shore is Egyptian, the eastern shore is Saudi Arabian, and the head of the Gulf is Israeli and Jordanian territory. The islands of Tiran and Sanafir front the entrance and have been under Egyptian occupation since 1950. Saudi Arabia, however, maintains the claim that the two islands are Saudi Arabian territory. The length of the Gulf is about 96 miles; the breadth at the entrance to the Gulf is 5¾ miles; at its widest the Gulf measures 14½ miles. The entrance to the Gulf is through the Strait of Tiran (about 3 miles wide), between Tiran Island and the Egyptian coast. There are two passages in the Strait; Enterprise Passage and Grafton Passage, 1,300 and 950 yards wide, respectively. Enterprise Passage, which lies close to the Sinai Peninsula coast, is the principal navigation channel into the Gulf, and the only channel that can be navigated safely by vessels of substantial size. On the coastline, Egypt and Saudi Arabia each have over 100 miles of territory; also Jordanian territory encompasses about 3½ miles and the territory of Israel about 6 miles.

Goodwin v. United Kingdom. App. No. 28957/95. At <http://www.echr.coe.int/Eng/Judgments.htm>.

European Court of Human Rights, Grand Chamber, July 11, 2002.

I. v. United Kingdom. App. No. 25680/94. At <http://www.echr.coe.int/Eng/Judgments.htm>. European Court of Human Rights, Grand Chamber, July 11, 2002.

Under English law, people may change their names and use those new names for official purposes. At the same time, specified biological criteria determine the sex of individuals under the law for various purposes, including marriage and retirement pensions. In Goodwin v. United Kingdom and I. v. United Kingdom, the question presented was whether such biological criteria impermissibly operate to the prejudice of postoperative transsexuals. The grand chamber of the European Court of Human Rights unanimously concluded that the practice of restricting gender in national law to the one registered at birth infringed both the right to respect for private life and the right to marry, contrary to the guarantees of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

Chapter 3, devoted to unneutral service, has only three articles; but they are important and were debated perhaps with more spirit than any other articles of the Declaration. The general subject is one which has been treated by Lord Stowell in a series of masterly judgments, and it is believed that an examination of two or three of them would form the best introduction to this chapter.

It is my purpose to present to you some aspects of the work of the Department of State. In view of the nature and scope of the discussions at this meeting I do not need to emphasize the extraordinary importance of our international relations at this time. But I feel that such discussions, despite their wide range, would be inadequate unless they also served to bring about a better understanding on the part of the business men of the country of the essential instrumentality through which intercourse with foreign governments is conducted.

The Special Committee on the Charter of the United Nations and on the Strengthening of the Role of the Organization, established in 1974, had never proposed an amendment to the UN Charter before its decision on March 10, 1995, to recommend deletion of the “enemy states” clauses. This action came, not coincidentally, during a year when the United Nations celebrated its fiftieth anniversary—a time for retrospective and prospective assessment. Amid the hoopla of the anniversary festivities, UN members engaged in serious reflection on ways and means of enhancing the effectiveness of the Organization as it confronts the challenges of a changing world.

The lawyers in every country have been kept busy during the last century in developing a special body of law, first for the railroad, then for the telegraph, and then for the telephone. They must soon address themselves to a new task of the same nature. The air-ship has at last been brought to a state of efficiency which, while far short of perfection, takes it out of the field of mere experiment and seems to assure its speedy employment in the transportation for hire of passengers and goods. Other uses of less worth to the community or of absolute detriment are equally certain. It will be seized as an aid in evil-doing by smugglers, spies, burglars; by criminals of all sorts flying from justice; and for illicit trade of every kind. It flies over the borders of one sovereignty into those of another as swiftly and irresponsibly as a bird. How far must it be the subject of public regulation? How fully can the precepts of private law which have been found applicable to other conditions and relations be applied to those resulting from the introduction of this new agency of power ? Can there be one world-law for the high air, as there is one world-law for the high sea ? Can such rules as those of general average and maritime lien be applied by analogy to aerial navigation ?“

When the Eighth International Conference of American States met at Lima in 1938 it was planned that the Ninth Conference should meet at Bogotá, Colombia, in 1943. The outbreak of the war in 1939, however, called for emergency measures in the form of three consultative meetings of Foreign Ministers and a special conference held at Mexico City in 1945. The First Meeting of Foreign Ministers at Panama in 1939 laid the basis for the maintenance of continental neutrality in accordance with standards of neutral conduct formally set forth in the Declaration of Panama. The Second Meeting of Foreign Ministers, held at Habana in 1940, proclaimed the principle of mutual defense against an attack by a non-American State and adopted measures to prevent the transfer of territory in the Western Hemisphere from one non-American State to another. The Third Meeting of Foreign Ministers, called in January 1942 after the entrance of the United States into the war, called for the breaking of diplomatic relations with the Axis Powers and for other measures of continental defense against the subversive activities of agents of tbp Axis Powers. In 1945, a special conference assembled in Mexico City to consolidate the defensive measures of the American States and to make pla is in anticipation of the conference to be held at San Francisco for the establishment of a general international organization for the maintenance of peace. This was followed by another special conference held at Rio de Janeiro in 1947 in which the collective security provisions adopted at Mexico City were given permanent form in the Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance.

A hotly debated issue raised in this publication’s October 1986 Agora and, repeatedly, during the drafting of the Restatement of Foreign Relations Law of the United States (Revised) has to do with the relationship between customary international law and federal law in the United States. Most of the debate addressed whether a newly emerged custom would supersede an earlier federal statute or self-executing treaty. The reporters of the Restatement took a strong stand at first, placing custom on the same plane as federal statutes and self-executing treaties: in case of conflict, the latest in time should prevail. Criticism rolled in, and the reporters eventually retreated a bit. The final version says only that since custom and international agreements have equal authority in international law, and both are law of the United States, “arguably later customary law should be given effect as law of the United States, even in the face of an earlier law or agreement, just as a later international agreement of the United States is given effect in the face of an earlier law or agreement.”’

The only significant point of disagreement this author might have with the June 27, 1986 decision on the merits by the International Court of Justice in the case of Nicaragua v. United States of America concerns its failure to hold the United States Government fully responsible for the violations of the laws and customs of warfare committed by the contra forces in Nicaragua. The Court carefully premised this result on the finding that it had insufficient evidence to reach a definitive conclusion on such a delicate matter. Nevertheless, the Court held it established that the U.S. Government largely financed, trained, equipped, armed and organized the contras. Somewhat questionably, in the Court’s estimation, it remained to be proven that the Reagan administration actually exercised operational control over the contra forces.