The World Court’s recent decision in the North Sea Continental Shelf Cases is a major contribution to that branch of the theory of customary international law dealing with norm-creation by means of a treaty. The Court articulated a new methodology for determining which provisions in treaties can form the basis of universally binding customary law. As the spreading network of international conventions becomes more fine-meshed, the substantive rules of international customary law may be expected to conform more and more closely to the provisions in these conventions. The World Court has implicitly recognized this process in many prior opinions, but it was not until the Continental Shelf decision that the link between treaty and custom was focused upon with precision. I shall argue in this essay that the Court used a method which might be called the rule of manifest intent, that this method differs from a more traditional approach found in the writings of publicists, and that this new method accords well with the growing need to objectify and place upon a scientific basis the methodology by which one may determine what in fact are the rules of customary law.

Since the close of the World War, there has been a continuous and often acrimonious discussion of the issues involved in the war debts of the Allied Powers to the Government of the United States. In estimating the mutual obligations of debtor and creditor governments, the issues involved in the “ repudiated debts” of the Southern States have been revived anew. In the British Parliament the matter has flared up again. On April 1,1925, Austen Chamberlain stated that His Majesty's Government had never made representations on the subject to Washington. “ I hope,” he said, “ that my noble friend (Lady Astor) will apply her persuasive eloquence to the legislatures and governments of those states.” On March 15, 1923, Stanley Baldwin, and on April 14, 1924, Ramsay MacDonald, had answered questions to the same effect. During the London Naval Conference of 1930, a debate on these debts took place in the House of Lords. On both sides of the ocean it has been suggested that the amount of the unpaid bonds be deducted from the amounts due to our government from those European Powers whose nationals now hold these state bonds.

In its advisory opinion, OC-24/17 (Advisory Opinion), the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR or Court) addressed globally debated issues concerning gender identity, same-sex relationships, and the rights of LGBTI persons. As discussed below, the Court reached conclusions more progressive than those of its European counterpart, due to its finding that the principle of individual autonomy is embedded in the foundations of human rights law and permeates individual self-determination, the free development of one's personality, and the protection of different models of the family. In line with an apparent trend in the Court's case law, the Advisory Opinion rejects the idea that domestic societies are sometimes entitled, by virtue of a margin of appreciation, to choose among different possibilities for protecting human rights, provided that certain international legal limits are observed—an idea addressed in the dissenting opinion.

Sanchez-Llamas v. Oregon, 126 S.Ct. 2669.

United States Supreme Court, June 28, 2006.

In Sanchez-Llamas v. Oregon, a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court held that suppression of evidence is not an appropriate remedy for violations of Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and that U.S. states may apply their regular procedural default rules to bar claims brought under Article 36. The Court reached the latter conclusion despite contrary reasoning by the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Article 36(1)(b) of the Vienna Convention provides that when one party country arrests nationals of another party country, it shall inform the foreign nationals without delay that they have the right to have their consulate notified of the arrest, and to communicate with the consulate. Article 36(2) adds that these rights “shall be exercised in conformity with the laws and regulations of the receiving State, subject to the proviso, however, that the said laws and regulations must enable full effect to be given to the purposes for which the rights accorded under this Article are intended.” The United States ratified the Vienna Convention in 1969, along with a protocol to the Convention providing that disputes between nations arising under the treaty could be heard in the ICJ.