Although diplomatic representatives enjoy certain immunities in the countries to which they are accredited, they are not free to disregard the laws of the state receiving them. When a diplomatic representative breaks the local law, the ordinary procedure and the usual sanctions cannot always be applied. However, the individual or the state injured by infraction of the law by the diplomatic representative is protected by a number of sanctions and means of applying them. The purpose of this study is to examine their effectiveness.

As a recurring feature of the Cold War that has dominated international relations for the past four decades, foreign intervention in civil armed conflicts has focused and inflamed scholarly debate over the content of the relevant legal restraints. Conflict has raged particularly around the following issues: First, what forms and degree of assistance to rebels constitute an armed attack within the meaning of Article 51 of the Charter authorizing individual and collective self-defense? Second, in cases where assistance does not reach the armed attack threshold, are there any circumstances in which the target state and/or its allies may nevertheless use forceful measures to terminate it?

A composite picture of the status of the Papacy in international law as described by the text-book writers down to 1929 has notably clear outlines. From the 8th century until 1870, the Pope, in addition to his spiritual authority as supreme head of the Roman Catholic Church, had, except for brief intervals, the rights of temporal sovereignty as head of a state. In that year Rome was occupied on September 20 by an Italian army, the occupation was ratified by popular vote, and the city made the capital of the Kingdom of Italy by the Italian Parliament on October 2; on October 9 it was annexed by royal decree, which was confirmed by law of December 31; in consequenceof which the Papal States disappeared and the temporal power of the Popewas ended. On May 13, 1871, the Italian Parliament enacted the Law of Guarantees which regulated the status of the Pope, so far as Italy was concerned, and purported to extend to him all necessary safeguards for the freeexercise throughout the world of his spiritual authority. This law securedto him personal inviolability and exemption from criminal liability, thoughhe remained subject to the civil courts of Italy, and it bestowed or recognized his enjoyment of certain rights and privileges belonging in other cases to temporal sovereigns, such as maintaining an armed force, freedom of correspondence and sending and receiving representatives to and from states beyond Italy. As a municipal statute, the Law of Guarantees could conferno international status upon the Pope, and although it might have been made the basis of treaty agreement between Italy and any Catholic or other Power, it was, so far as known, never so treated, and therefore remained legallyalways capable of change by Italy alone. The Popes never formally acceptedthe provisions of this law nor the endowment granted by it, and in protest against the events of 1870 they objected to any Catholic sovereignvisiting the King of Italy, and remained after their election perpetually with in the Vatican without emerging on to other Italian soil. The Poperetained the right to make with sovereign states concordats concerningecclesiastical affairs, as before his loss of temporal power; and continued toexercise the rights of active and passive legation as assured by the Law of Guarantees. The Papal household subsisted on food and water whose deprivation would have threatened life itself had Italy joined for a month inthe policy of non-intercourse adopted for the Pope personally. The statusof the Pope in international law was abnormal and unique.

Today, the anniversary of the death of Franklin Roosevelt, is especially appropriate for a discussion of the political evolution of two territories whose development, before and after his death, was shaped by Roosevelt’s enlightened vision of world public order. The Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (TTPI) was an inheritance of a war waged by the United States in affirmation of “the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they live.” Puerto Rico’s progressive dismantlement of colonial government had its origins in the New Deal. It was furthered by Roosevelt’s support of Puerto Rico’s Popular Democratic Party and a policy favoring self-determination and decolonization entrusted by Roosevelt to a succession of sympathetic and imaginative administrators. Both territories emerged in the postwar period as natural objects of the concern of the world community which Roosevelt helped to organize.

Because of the deficiencies in her laws and judicial administration, China has for eighty years passively accepted the arrangement, sanctioned by treaties, under which foreigners found within her territory are clothed with extraterritorial rights. The privileged status thus accorded to foreigners virtually established in that country an anomalous system of foreign jurisdictions.Now that the Chinese laws and judicial machinery are being improved in accordance with modern requirements, what was once a Chinese attitude of silent acquiescence toward the restriction of sovereignty has today become one of active and energetic protest against its further continuance.

The Central American Peace Conference which met at Washington on November 14 and adjourned December 20, 1907, in accordance with the protocol between the Eepublica of Costa Eica, Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, signed at Washington, September 17, 1907, is not only in accord with the general tendency of our times toward more helpful relations between neighboring nations, but is a direct outgrowth of a policy which has repeatedly led to similar conferences with a view to promote a better under-standing and a more complete cooperation between the republics of Central America.

While the global pandemic has exposed the fragility of human rights protections, it has also resulted in rights victories for some of the most vulnerable members of society. This Essay examines epistemic, consequentialist, and normative rights reframing efforts that have been mobilized to advocate for and secure human rights during the pandemic through the lens of prisoners’ rights. It argues that these rights seeking strategies hold promise for advancing rights claims of prisoners and other marginalized groups beyond the pandemic.

It is apparent that the laws of war (by which I mean both the law protecting prisoners, sick and wounded, and civilians under the control of a belligerent on the one hand, and the law governing the conduct of hostilities on the other) are in large part old and in considerable part obsolete. The. Geneva Conventions of 1949, the most recent major international instruments in diis field, cover the protection of prisoners of war, the sick and wounded, and civilians in occupied territory. But they reflect the experience of World War II, and their applicability to more recent types of warfare is not always easy. Civil wars, mixed civil and international conflicts, and guerrilla warfare in general all raise problems under those conventions. Moreover, all too often nations refuse to apply the conventions in situations where they clearly should be applied. Attempts to justify such refusals are often based on differences between the conflicts presently encountered and those for which the conventions were supposedly adopted. Other aspects of the laws of war, except for the use of poison gas and bacteriological weapons (which were the subjects of the 1925 Geneva Gas Protocol), and the protection of cultural property (the subject of a 1954 Convention), have been left untouched since the Hague Conventions of 1907. The expansion of military objectives and changes in weaponry and fire power have increased many fold the vulnerability of noncombatants. The law has not developed apace.

The President, says the Constitution of the United States, “shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.” What working relationship between the President and the Senate was this provision intended to establish in the complex and delicate business of determining the foreign policy of the nation and conducting its foreign relations in accordance with that policy?

At the beginning of the present war the belligerents, of course, set up prize courts. Germany enacted a new Prize Law Code and a new Prize Court Code. But no belligerent, with the exception of Great Britain, has yet published reports of prize cases. True, compared with the enormous amount of prize cases during the war of 1914–1918 in Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy, the number of British prize cases so far reported is comparatively very small. Yet it seems important to investigate these cases to which the science of international law has paid no attention up to now. It is proposed to give here a systematic study of these prize cases, from the points of view of substantive and formal prize law, and of the law of prize procedure.

There are no established definitions in law for describing the upper regions of the atmosphere or the space beyond the atmosphere. The legal dictionaries and the law encyclopedias do not even refer to the stratosphere or the areas above.

Article 1 of the Convention on Certain Questions Relating to the Conflict of Nationality Laws permits “each state to determine under its own law who are its nationals.” It is precisely because the loss and acquisition of nationality is a matter of unilateral state action that statelessness under certain conditions does occur. The loss of nationality is sometimes closely related to the methods by which nationality is acquired. Most common among these methods of acquisition are: (1) by birth, (2) by minority, (3) by marriage.