On December 23, 2016, the United States abstained from voting on a United Nations Security Council resolution that condemned Israeli settlement construction, thereby allowing the resolution to be adopted by a vote of 14–0. Israel's response was swift and disapproving.

A landmark of the law of naturalization in the United States, established by the Supreme Court after a tortuous course of decision, has now found legislative confirmation in a provision in the Internal Security Act of 1950.

The oath of petitioners for naturalization provided for in §4 (3) of the Act of 1906 required a declaration of willingness “to support the Constitution and laws of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and bear true faith and allegiance to the same”; and the Act provided that the naturalization court must be satisfied that during his residence the petitioner has behaved as a man “attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and well disposed to the good order and happiness of the same.”

For some years the question was put to petitioners, “If necessary, are you willing to take up arms in defense of this country?” A negative answer to this question led to a denial of the petition in U. S. v. Schwimmer (1929), 279 U. S. 644. This was followed in U. S. v. Macintosh (1931), 283 U. S. 589, and U. S. v. Bland (1931), 283 U. S. 636. Despite these decisions, no change was made in the required oath when the Nationality Act was revised in 1940. Yet the three earlier decisions were overruled in U. S. v. Girouard (1946), 328 U. S. 61, on the ground that the required oath might properly be taken by a person unwilling on religious grounds to bear arms.

In their article Imperfect Alternatives: Institutional Choice and Reform of Investment Law, Sergio Puig and Gregory Shaffer develop a clear and discerning comparative framework to evaluate alternatives to the current system of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). In her essay Incremental, Systemic, and Paradigmatic Reform of Investor-State Arbitration, Anthea Roberts offers us a bracingly candid typology to describe the various actors involved in the recent efforts toward reform. My essay is meant to complement these excellent contributions and to focus unflinchingly on the tripartite role of the state itself. What I call the ISDS Trinity can be understood as shorthand for the state's systemic role as (1) law-giver, (2) protector of investment, and (3) respondent. Looking at current and future design trade-offs, I suggest that whether an institutional choice is embraced within the ISDS system has a lot to do with how well the reform validates each of these three roles. In this way, the ISDS Trinity offers further insight into how each state will approach the various trade-offs and intercamp dynamics described by Puig and Shaffer, and by Roberts, within the current debate. Put another way, the ISDS Trinity sheds additional light on whether a reform to the system will be well-received by a state and thus enjoy a greater chance of adoption.

Unique among the governing bodies of the world today, controlling in large measure about thirty-one thousand square kilometers of the former German Empire with a population exceeding six million inhabitants, the Interallied Rhineland High Commission, the supreme representative of the Allied and Associated Powers within the occupied territory, presents to the student of administrative law much that is enlightening, interesting and valuable. In this branch of jurisprudence, so highly developed among continental European nations, America has not specialized to any marked degree, and indeed the same may be said of Great Britain. The High Commission— referred to hereinafter for the sake of brevity as the Commission— is the antithesis of the legal doctrine enunciated by Montesquieu and so readily accepted by the framers of our own Constitution: the triune distribution of power, the separation of governmental authority into executive, legislative and judicial departments, each distinct and independent of the others, yet all so correlated as to make one consistent, harmonious and logical system of government. The Commission itself exercises executive, legislative and judicial authority, and not infrequently issues its administrative mandates, enacts important and far-reaching ordinances, and reviews, as would an appellate court, the action of a German civil or criminal court at one and the same sitting. And it must be said with entire frankness that it does all these things well. Perhaps its limited personnel—men, however, of exceeding high mental and statesmanlike qualities—is responsible for much of its success. Be that as it may, the excellence of its administration is another proof that the “ form” of a government is not the thing which counts, but the results of that government's action.

On the 24th of October, 1945, the nationalization of mines, certain industrial enterprises, banks, and insurance companies was decreed in Czechoslovakia. The decrees took effect on the 27th day of October, 1945, the day of their promulgation. The purpose of this study is to examine these measures and their effects, first, on foreign-owned property in Czechoslovakia and, second, on assets of Czechoslovak nationalized enterprises located abroad. Particular emphasis will be placed on the effect of the decrees on property owned by American nationals in Czechoslovakia and on assets situated in the United States of enterprises nationalized in Czechoslovakia.

Since the outbreak of the Great War in the summer of 1914 the conviction has deepened that whatever may have been the conflict of interests between the nations of Europe due to their efforts to maintain or increase their political influence and territorial extent, this calamitous struggle would not have been precipitated, and certainly England and the United States would not have felt forced to become parties to it, had there not existed in Germany a controlling political philosophy which marked her off from other States and made her a menace to the rest of humanity. It is true that the proximate cause that brought Great Britain into the war was the invasion of Belgium by the German army, which jeopardized her own security from invasion; and it is equally true that it was the disregard by Germany of our own commercial rights as a neutral nation that was the immediate cause of our own declaration of war. But back of these proximate or immediate causes was a real efficient cause which impelled both Great Britain and the United States to enter the contest and to pledge to its successful prosecution their entire manhood and material resources.

By a joint resolution passed on April 30 Congress reënacted, with modifications in some cases, and made permanent the essential provisions of the temporary resolution of August 31,1935 (as amended February 29,1936), which by its own terms expired on May 1, 1937. With the exception of the new Section 6 dealing with restrictions on the exportation and transportation of commodities other than arms, ammunition and implements of war, the duration of which by its own terms is limited to two years, the present resolution is therefore intended to lay down a permanent neutrality policy for the United States.