In an exchange of notes of November 2, 1917, between Secretary of State Lansing and Viscount Ishii, Special Ambassador of Japan, occurs the following paragraph:

That states are more interested in the immediate neighborhood of their frontiers than in remote parts of the world, and are apt to carry on a disproportionate commerce and intercourse or even to expand in such regions, are facts familiar to all students of history and diplomacy; but that geographical position should create special legal capacities is a doctrine perhaps more unfamiliar and seemingly in conflict with certain traditionally repeated maxims, such as the equality of states. If peculiar geographic relationship gives rise to peculiar legal privileges and responsibilities, an absolute equality of states can not be assumed, although equality before the law or equal protection of the law might still be recognized. The fact is unquestionable that on frequent occasions the geographic position of territory. has been offered and accepted as a justification for exceptional proceedings, admitted, in some cases, to be otherwise contrary to the requirements of international law.

English and American Doctrine and Practice. The question of the right of enemy subjects to sue in the courts of an adversary can hardly be said to be regulated by international law, unless the muchcontroverted Article 23(h) of the Hague Convention of 1907 respecting the laws and customs of war on land, is interpreted to apply to the actions of the judicial authorities. Certainly it is not true, as is sometimes asserted, that it is a principle of international law that they have no right of access to the courts of the adverse power. Like the practice in respect to trading with the enemy the matter is determined by the municipal law of each belligerent and is based upon considerations of public policy.

Bond v. United States had long been anticipated as the case in which the Supreme Court would revisit Missouri v. Holland (1920) and limit Congress’s authority to implement treaties. In the event, the Court did nothing of the kind. Only three Justices would have recognized judicially enforceable limits on the Treaty Power (Thomas, joined by Scalia and Alito, concurring in the judgment), and only two would have adopted the crabbed reading of the Necessary and Proper Clause advocated by Professor Nicholas Rosenkranz (Scalia, joined by Thomas, concurring in the judgment).

It is the purpose of this article to investigate the status of concession agreements in the light of the rules of international law bearing on the power of a state to nationalize property. It is a continuation of an earlier article which explored the nature and function of the concession agreement in the national and international economies. The first article rested on the assumption that legal rules could not be fully understood or evaluated without a fairly clear understanding of the social facts which they were designed to regulate.

So long as the rule of capture of private property at sea exists unimpaired, states with mercantile marines of any importance will find that one of the problems they have to face in war is to defend their sea-borne commerce, and to attack that of their adversary. On the 26th March, 1913, Mr. Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the British Admiralty, made an important statement in the House of Commons regarding the methods proposed by Great Britain for the protection of trade. As reported in the Times Mr. Churchill’s speech was as follows: