The Committee on International Criminal Jurisdiction appointed by the General Assembly of the United Nations met in Geneva in August, 1951. Its report, accompanied by a Draft Statute for an International Criminal Court, has been submitted to the, governments of Member States for comment before June 1, 1952.

Daniel Bethlehem has set down sixteen principles relevant to the scope of a state’s right of self-defense against an imminent or actual armed attack by nonstate actors “with the intention of stimulating a wider debate.” While these principles “are published under [the author’s] responsibility alone,” they have “nonetheless been informed by detailed discussions over recent years with foreign ministry, defense ministry, and military legal advisers from a number of states who have operational experience in these matters.”

In a unanimous judgment in the case Hirsi Jamaa v. Italy, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (Court) held that Italy’s “push back” operations interdicting intending migrants and refugees at sea and returning them to Libya amounted to a violation of the prohibition of torture and other inhuman or degrading treatment under Article 3 of the European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR or Convention), the prohibition of collective expulsions under Article 4 of Protocol 4 to the Convention, and the right to an effective remedy under Article 13 of the Convention. Hirsi Jamaa is the Court’s first judgment on the interception of migrants at sea and it addresses issues concerning the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the 1979 International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue, as well as the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.

The Dominican Republic (DR) filed its declaration accepting the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Inter-American Court or Court) on March 22, 1999, and since then has been the subject of four judgments and a series of provisional measures. On November 4, 2014, however, the Constitutional Tribunal of the Dominican Republic (Tribunal) declared unconstitutional the government’s declaration accepting jurisdiction, implying that the Dominican Republic is not now, and perhaps never has been, under the Inter-American Court’s jurisdiction.

Although it is not yet clear whether the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III) will succeed in its task of adopting a “convention dealing with all matters relating to the law of the sea,” the drafters of the Informal Composite Negotiating Text (ICNT) produced at the conference’s sixth session decided to incorporate proposals on the final clauses of a future convention in the ICNT. Indeed, even if the conference were to reach consensus overnight on all outstanding substantive issues, problems relating to these final clauses could easily delay—or even jeopardize—the adoption of a new convention: they involve, after all, very complex political and legal questions. It is therefore only right that the conference agreed not to leave these problems to the very end of the negotiating process.

An event which awakened a lively interest on the part of the American business community in the economic activities of the United Nations occurred in December, 1952. A United Nations General Assembly resolution contained the proposition that “the right of peoples freely to use and exploit their natural wealth and resources is inherent in their sovereignty.…”

International organizations undermine democracy, or so their critics charge: not only do international organizations themselves operate undemocratically, but they undercut democratic governance within their member states. In particular, when states participate in international organizations, they lose control over policy outcomes because each state must share decision-making authority with other member states. And within member states, national legislatures—the bodies specifically designed to be responsive to popular control—are marginalized. Legislatures lack direct influence over international organizations and also have little influence over the executive branch’s interactions with such organizations.

As “house counsel” to the Department of State, the Office of the Legal Adviser exerts a major influence on the views and policies of the United States Government concerning matters of international law.

Pending the establishment of the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights remains the only institutional body for the implementation of the rights guaranteed in the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights. The Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), reconstituted as the African Union (AU), established the Commission in 1987, after the entry into force of the African Charter, in 1986, and pursuant to its Article 64 (1). The Commission was established, inter alia, “to promote human and peoples' rights and ensure their protection in Africa.” That is, besides “any other tasks which may be entrusted to it” by the Assembly, the Commission performs three primary functions: it promotes and protects human and peoples' rights and interprets the provisions of the Charter.

Tibet has recently been invaded by Communist China and deprived of independence. The Mao Tse-Tung government justifies the invasion by China’s claim to suzerainty over Tibet, though the latter, before finally disappearing from the international scene, had again and again denied that she was still a vassal of China.

The military interventions initiated by Israel, the United Kingdom, and France in Egypt and by the Soviet Union in Hungary, during October and November, 1956, have different historical backgrounds and different political purposes. They may have been politically connected with one another, and in any case they were connected by the fact that they occurred at the same time and were all dealt with by the United Nations. It is the purpose of this article to examine the legal justification for these interventions with only the minimum historical background necessary for that purpose. The criteria for aggression which the writer developed in the July, 1956, number of this Journal will be assumed and for their justification the reader is referred to that article.

Expropriations in the later 1970’s often proceed more suavely than in the past. Straightforward seizure, to be sure, still has devotees. However, an increasingly favored approach is to induce the foreign investor to convey his property (or an interest therein) by an instrument that on its face represents an ordinary sale. That sale may be accompanied by a revision of the terms of some underlying contract between the investor and the government. The purpose of this article is to explore whether any body of rules now exists setting limits to the means that a government can use to obtain the investor’s consent. It then asks whether that law could be further developed so as to improve the quality of such negotiations and to cause them to produce more equitable results. Thereby it would indirectly improve the security and efficiency of the whole process of foreign direct investment.

Daniel Bethlehem has proposed a series of principles relating to a state’s use of military force against nonstate actors (NSAs). He believes that his proposals will lead to the formulation of a “clear set of principles that effectively address the specific operational circumstances faced by states.” While Bethlehem’s intentions may be laudable, his effort is founded on the misconception that the international legal system lacks sufficiently clear principles to govern the use of military force against NSAs. The system already has such principles, as this comment will show.

Until lately, the procedure of third-party intervention before the International Court of Justice provided for by Articles 62 and 63 of the Statute of the Court had been underutilized; as a result, there was scant judicial authority and comparatively little academic discussion on its use and limitations. This situation has now dramatically changed, as three recent cases before the Court have involved claims of third-party intervention: that between Tunisia and Libya, where Malta made the request to intervene; that between Libya and Malta, where Italy was the requesting state; and, most recently, the case between Nicaragua and the United States, where El Salvador made a declaration of intervention.

It is the purpose of the law of State responsibility to extend the protection of international law to those who travel abroad and to facilitate social and economic ties between States. regardless of its political or economic philosophy, can remain indifferent to mistreatment of its nationals abroad. In an interdependent world the well-being of many countries rests upon an influx of foreign funds and managerial skills, the owners of which must be given effective protection against unjust prosecution or discrimination.

Responding to this need, international law has developed over the last two hundred years standards and procedures designed to protect the life, liberty, and economic security of nationals of one State who live or conduct business activities.in another State. The General Assembly of the United Nations decided in 1953 that “it is desirable for the maintenance and development of peaceful relations between States that the principles of international law governing State responsibility be codified,” and requested the International Law Commission to undertake this codification. The Commission appointed as rapporteur for that subject Dr. F. V. García-Amador, who has submitted to the Commission six excellent reports on various aspects of State responsibility.

If, after the nineteenth century, there remained any question concerning the universality of international law, or of its fundamental rules, it appeared to be largely one of legal history. But as the world of the twentieth century has come to be divided by political ideologies, their legal ramifications have given the question new actuality as one of basic legal theory. That the Family of Nations, or the subjects of international law, embraced virtually all states of the world seemed no longer open to serious doubt when non-Christian states wholly outside Europe took part in the Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907 and when participation by such states was continued and further extended in the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and in the League of Nations. Yet the same period that saw the unquestioned global expansion of international law has had to face new challenges to its unity as a single, universally valid legal system. They were raised chiefly by German Nazis and Soviet Communists, or in turn against them by their respective critics and opponents. Confronted with these challenges, the universal validity of international law appears no longer as an existingphenomenon that may be traced back to its origins and on to its eventual completion, but as a debatable assumption that stands to be justified or rejected in the light of fresh examination.