That man could destroy his civilization has been known, theoretically, for many years; now there is actual proof that he can. Atomic bombs have been unleashed in international society, the results of which have no comparison in history.

For the first time in over one hundred years the American public has large numbers of foreign prisoners of war in its midst. While German naval prisoners were held in the United States during the last World War they numbered only a few thousand men, as compared with the total today of over three hundred thousand Germans with additional numbers still pouring into our ports. The task of housing and feeding these prisoners, of providing for their other needs as well as of guarding them and putting them to work at productive labor, has been the responsibility of the War Department. With few precedents and practically no experience to fall back upon, it has done and is doing an enormous job with results that, as a whole, are a credit to the good name of the United States.

The arbitration between Ethiopia and Italy, concerning the armed clash which occurred at Wal Wal, in the Ogaden, on December 5–6,1934, offers a number of interesting aspects to the student of international adjudication, and, indeed, to the student of international organization and procedure in general. In addition, the case should be recorded as such and for what it is worth while the materials are still available and while personal recollections of the incident are fresh.

Though the eighteenth year of the Permanent Court of International Justice has been the most critical year in its history, the Court has carried on its work in a regular way and some notable additions to its jurisprudence have been made during the year.

In the early months of the year, the Court held two series of meetings, from January 19 to April 4, and from May 15 to June 15; later in the year a series of meetings was held from November 28 to December 5. The Court was in actual session during the year for a total of 116 days; this was considerably less than the average of 144 days for each of the previous seventeen years, though it exceeded the number of 69 days of actual session during the year 1938.

The material in this section is arranged according to the system employed in the annual Digest of United States Practice in International Law, published by the Department of State.

The stunning vote against the Colombian Peace Agreement opens an opportunity to include in the negotiations issues that were not included in the first deal—despite the fact that their omission had the potential to undermine the goal of a sustainable peace. One such issue is foreign investment law. Since the beginning of the talks, the Colombian government was keen on emphasizing that the country’s “economic model” was not subject to negotiation. The shadow of Venezuela loomed large in that position. Whatever came out of the talks was to be integrated in a framework of a free market economy, where private property and, above all, foreign investments would be respected.

A critical characteristic of migration is that it involves people in all their complexity, and with all their complex needs. Therefore, migration, perhaps more than any other field of international law, is difficult to separate as a body of law from human rights, trade, taxation, investment, health, security, etc. In this brief essay, I will describe two critical, and distinct, linkages that prevent us from cabining migration as a separate field. Both arise in the area of labor migration. Indeed, it is through linkage with other fields of international law, such as trade and investment, that states could establish international legal commitments to liberalize migration.

When the Supreme Court held that the executive branch has exclusive authority to recognize foreign sovereigns in the Jerusalem passport case, Zivotofsky v. Kerry (Zivotofsky II), Jack Goldsmith hailed the decision as a “vindication” of presidential signing statements and executive power. Indeed, in the context of the debate over the treatment of the terror suspects, the New York Times had called such signing statements the “constitutionally ludicrous” work of an overreaching, “imperial presidency.”

The history of the International Court of Justice in its thirty-third year is contained in narrow compass. It is chiefly confined to one judgment rendered by the Court in the Case of the Monetary Gold Removed From Borne in 1943, and to the advisory opinion given by the Court on the Effect of Awards Made By the United Nations Administrative Tribunal. Apart from these, in the Nottebohm Case between Liechtenstein and Guatemala, the time for the rejoinder of Guatemala to be filed was extended for one month, to November 2, 1954. Action was taken by the Court ordering that the “Électricité de Beyrouth” Company Case be removed from the list at the request of the French Government; the Court also ordered that two cases brought by the United States against Hungary and the Soviet Union, relating to the Treatment in Hungary of Aircraft and Crew of United States of America, should be removed from the list for lack of jurisdiction.