The sixteenth year of the Permanent Court of International Justice was not marked by a great increase in the volume of its jurisprudence, but three judgments were handed down and several events of importance are to be chronicled for this period.

On October 12, 2017, the United States announced its intent to withdraw from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), citing “concerns with mounting arrears …, the need for fundamental reform in the organization, and continuing anti-Israel bias.” The United States will remain a full UNESCO member until December 31, 2018, when the withdrawal becomes effective. Thereafter, it will continue to engage with UNESCO as a non-member observer state.

In the case of the Mexican Union Railway, Ltd., decided in February, 1930, the British-Mexican Claims Commission, set up in accordance with the Convention of November 19,1926, added another stone to the somewhat unsteady structure of decisions on the Calvo Clause. The majority of the Commissioners enthusiastically adopted the considerationsof the United States-Mexican General Claims Commission in the North American Dredging Case, “ not thinking it necessary to repeat them, or possible to express them better.” Even the British Commissioner, Sir John Percival, who dissented, differed from the majority mainly in regard to the application of the opinion in the North American Dredging Case to the case at bar, and was not less cordial in his approval of that opinion.