It has long been recognized by students of international law that international legal rules may be significant issues in litigation before a municipal court. Three types of relationship of international law to municipal litigation may be observed: (1) those cases wherein the rules of international law are not germane; (2) those cases wherein the rules of international law, either conventional or customary, are a specific issue before the court and accordingly become part of the ratio decidendi of the court—the Sabbatino case is an example; and (3) those cases wherein international law rules are not a specific issue before the court but are part of the legal environment of the case. In these cases the court relies upon domestic law in its ratio deciderteli, but its cognizance of, or deference to, international law rules may either support or weaken international law. Although this note examines the third type of cases, the categories are not rigidly exclusive.

I would like to center my remarks on the question of how the issue of sanctions should be dealt with in the Rhodesian case.

Rhodesia is a situation of outstanding importance. First, the rebel government of Salisbury is not recognized anywhere in the world in either a de jure or a de facto sense. Secondly, the British Government claims sovereignty over Rhodesia; therefore, constitutionally, the British Parliament can legislate for Rhodesia.

In this dispute settlement action in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the complainant European Communities (EC) challenged the 1986 Japan-U.S. Arrangement on Semiconductor Trade (Arrangement). The panel of three experts found that (1) export regulations that prevent or quantitatively restrict exports below a minimum price level are inconsistent with GATT Article XI; (2) a complex of Japanese government measures including non-legally binding administrative guidance to prevent semiconductor exports below cost were such export restrictions and, hence, inconsistent with GATT Article XI; (3) the GATT’s provisions on dumping in Article VI neither justify nor forbid such restraints by exporting countries; and (4) the evidence did not show that Japanese actions to improve market access for foreign semiconductors had discriminated in favor of U.S. products.

The Permanent Court of International Justice was not active during its twentieth year. The institutional framework of the Court was maintained, the personnel of its bench was kept intact, its officials were at their posts, and certain funds were available for current expenses; but no sessions were held during the year, and no progress was made with the two pending cases. Nor were there any significant developments during the year with reference to the international instruments relating to the Court, the attention of Governments being completely engrossed in other fields.

Customary international law often seems like a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. According to Manley O. Hudson, even the drafters of the International Court of Justice Statute “had no very clear idea as to what constituted international custom.” The situation has not changed much since then.

I got my first taste of the difficulties in identifying custom when I was a junior attorney at the U.S. Department of State and was assigned the task of preparing the U.S. submission in a juvenile death penalty case before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The juvenile death penalty is prohibited by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the American Convention on Human Rights, but the question in the Inter-American Commission case was whether it is also prohibited as a matter of customary international law.

On November 30, 2016, after much uncertainty, the Colombian Congress finally approved a historic peace deal between the Colombian government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), bringing to an end the country's fifty-year conflict. This peace deal was a historical achievement, and had important ramifications for international law, as discussed in a recent AJIL Unbound symposium. But once the spotlights were off, the government was faced with the daunting challenge of implementing the complex, lengthy accord. In particular, the government had to draw up and pass through Congress the legal and constitutional framework for the transitional justice process—a key component of the peace deal. It is there, in the subtle details of domestic criminal law, where the balance between peace and justice must be achieved.