In the very able paper appearing in a previous issue of this Journal, discussing the question of whether the United States should or should not fortify the Panama Canal, the writer states his conclusion that we are legally and morally bound to abstain from fortifying, that the advantages which fortifications might give are more than offset by their disadvantages, and, irrespective of the question of legality, it is bad public policy and strategy to fortify.

As he searches for differences in how democratic and authoritarian governments use international law, Tom Ginsburg highlights—perhaps inadvertently—the fact that both kinds of regime use law as a tool to advance their goals. Governments’ goals may differ, both within and across regime types, but the instrumental use of law in the service of political ends does not. Ginsburg's article permits three distinct readings: it is an effort to show a correlation between regime-type and uses of international law; it is also an argument that the historical-normative core of international law included the promotion of “liberal” goals such as human rights and democracy; and third, it is a defense of the meta-claim that law follows the political purposes of society's powerful actors. This third contribution is the quietest in the article but is arguably the most important. Because the methodological difficulties in correlating regime type with attitude toward international law are insuperable, Ginsburg's contribution is that he directs attention to the substantive goals that governments pursue through law and to the tradeoffs that follow as one goal wins over others. The normative valence of international law depends on how one feels about these practical tradeoffs; those whose interests are harmed by international law have good reason to feel disadvantaged.

Selection of a library can be a troublesome problem for the lawyer advising clients with international problems. Fortunate is he whose office is but a stone’s throw from the library of a great law school or one of the few Bar Association libraries with the knowledge and funds to enter the foreign field. Most lawyers must get along with the relatively few materials which can be made available in their office or in the local law library.

The requirement for international standards for rescue and return of distressed astronauts rapidly assumed importance in the first years of the space age, paralleling development of the technology necessary to sustain man in outer space and to permit re-entry of spacecraft through the earth’s atmosphere. The need increased in the early 1960’s when both the United States and the Soviet Union announced inauguration of space flight programs to send men to the moon and return them to earth. It was recognized that, in the continued absence of any firm international consensus on this subject, international friction could be caused by disagreement over procedure to be followed, the nature and extent of states’ obligations, or by differences in interpreting or applying legal principles in the event earth or space rescue and return operations became necessary. These conditions (possible unintentional misunderstanding during manned flight emergencies, swift developments in astronautical science and technology that made manned space flight a reality, and the importance of astronauts in terms of national prestige and subsequent status as “envoys of mankind”) combined to encourage international agreement upon standards for rescue and return by way of direct discussion among states, informal agreement, and, ultimately, conclusion of formal conventions governing this activity; and they discouraged reliance by nations upon principles or practices derived from custom and precedent.