The world community is not on the brink of Armageddon because of a paucity of legal answers. Legal institutions exist. Moreover, any problem, without respect to the identity of the decision-maker, may be solved “legally”: by impartial assessment of the facts and formulation of a decision by reference to the parties’ commitments as well as to overriding community policies. Most frequently the real problem is not in arriving at an answer in law, but in enforcing an answer in law. In the final analysis, law is not only, as the Legal Eealists contend, what the courts say 2 but also what the sheriff does. Law comprises not only the verbal pronouncements of authoritative organs, but also the established patterns of behavior of the individuals composing society.

Writers of science fiction have often speculated about what it would be like to discover, on a planet in outer space, a much higher form of intelligence. How would we react to those creatures? Would we be so fearful of them that we would try to kill them? Or would we welcome the opportunity to attempt to understand their language and culture? Stranger than fiction is the fact that there already exists a species of animal life on earth that scientists speculate has higher than human intelligence. The whale has a brain that in some instances is six times bigger than the human brain and its neocortex is more convoluted. Discussing the creative processes of whales, Dr. John Lilly says that a researcher “is struck with the fact that one’s current basic assumptions and even one’s current expectations determine, within certain limits, the results attained with a particular animal at that particular time.” Whales speak to other whales in a language that appears to include abstruse mathematical poetry. They have also developed interspecies communication with dolphins. Whales are the most specialized of all mammals.

The problems raised by the unwillingness en masse of the North Korean and Chinese prisoners of war to be repatriated in accord with the rights given them under the 1949 Geneva Convention, present, in a revealing perspective, the test to which the Korean conflict has put positive international law. Apart from the final solution, which is based on a United Nations resolution grounded in valid international law, the attitude of both sides throughout the Pan Mun Jom negotiations raised quite sharply several questions. Standing out among them was, on the side of the United Nations, the policy question of confidence in, and application of, international law, and the legal question of its dynamic interpretation and adjustment. More generally and, in part, de lege ferenda, the ideological basis of the war prisoner issue raised a fundamental question of values, and added a new dimension to one of the central foci in the modern development of international law: the rights of individuals, per se and in their relations to the rights of states. Viewed from this standpoint, the prominence of the prisoner-of-war question in the armistice negotiations looks much less incidental or opportunistic than some current commentaries may have made it seem.

During the past several years, vetoes have been cast in the UN Security Council to block draft resolutions aimed at addressing the crises in Syria and Ukraine. Concerning Syria, Russia and China have vetoed three resolutions (the votes were 9-2-4 on October 4, 2011, 13-2-0 on February 4, 2012, and 11-2-2 on July 19, 2012). Concerning Ukraine, Russia vetoed a resolution just recently (the vote was 13-1-1 on March 15, 2014). The same question that arose in 1950 has thus arisen again today: can the General Assembly do anything when the Council is blocked because of a permanent member casting a veto? The answer is “yes.” But the reason is not because of the Assembly’s resolution 377A(V) of November 3, 1950 (“Uniting for Peace”), even though advocates of Assembly action frequently invoke it. Indeed, this resolution is for the most part no longer needed to provide a basis for Assembly “collective measures” recommendations when a veto proscribes the Council’s adoption of such measures. Moreover, the resolution does not provide a basis or justification for the use of force that would not be justified on other grounds, such as self-defense.

Greta Gaard writes that “[t]he pervasive availability of cows’ milk today—from grocery stores to gas stations—is a historically unprecedented product of industrialization, urbanization, culture, and economics.” To these factors, I would add colonialism and international law; the latter understood broadly to include the rules considered binding between states and nations, transnational law, legal transplants, international food aid, and international trade law. Until the end of the Nineteenth Century, the majority of the world population neither raised animals for their milk nor consumed animal milk. Humans are unique in the mammalian realm in that they drink the milk of other species, including beyond infancy. With the European conquest of the New World and other territories starting in the Sixteenth Century, dairying began to spread worldwide—settlers did not set out to colonize lands and people alone; they brought with them their flora, fauna, and other forms of life, including lactating animals such as cows and sheep.

Concerns over the weaponization of energy during the war in Ukraine have revived state anxieties about overreliance on certain foreign energy sources. This Essay argues that instruments of energy trade and investment protection have helped to lock states into dangerous dependencies. Trade and investment law can inhibit energy security strategies designed to diversify away from unreliable sources and to block suspicious investors. With energy used as a weapon, reform of the liberal energy regime is needed to allow states to prevent the creation of dependencies and protect their energy security in the new geopolitical reality.

This essay addresses the question of how the international community could designate high seas marine protected areas (MPAs) that would be binding on all states. This is a key issue for the forthcoming UN negotiations of an International Legally Binding Instrument (ILBI) on conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction. However, this is a longstanding question, the importance of which transcends the ILBI negotiations. Some have argued for the establishment of a centralized Ocean Governance Authority, whose decisions would be universally binding; others have argued that existing regional and sectoral bodies can be relied on to protect biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction. The experience of the Sargasso Sea project is that some sort of centralized or coordinating regime is needed to make MPAs effective across regional and sectoral bodies.

In the wake of nationalist movements directed against the determination of The Netherlands not to give up their rights to West New Guinea, the Indonesian central government in 1958 nationalized Dutch properties, among them tobacco plantations.

In a press conference of January 19, 1955, President Eisenhower envisaged the possibility of settling the problem of China by recognizing the existence of “two Chinas”—mainland China, on the one hand, and Formosa and the Pescadores, on the other—and promoting a non-aggression agreement between them. From the point of view of international law this suggestion involves consideration of (1) the de facto situation, (2) the law of recognition, and the application of that law (3) to mainland China, (4) to Formosa and the Pescadores, and (5) in American traditions. Apart from considerations of fact and law, considerations of present national interest and opinion are important.

Until quite recently the doctrine of act of state had long occupied a quiet backwater of English jurisprudence. Some cases of the last few years, however, have indicated that this doctrine may assume considerable importance in the future. In this respect the English experience is similar to that of the United States, where act of state cases were relatively rare and received little attention for many years before Sabbatino. This coincidence should cause little surprise for, as the cases in both nations make clear, there are common underlying causes. Act of state doctrine developed in an era when governments confined themselves to a narrow range of activities. Nowadays, however, the doctrine is being strained to cope with the activities of states whose governments own and develop natural resources, and engage in international trade, while maintaining an approach to property and contractual rights vastly different from that of the United Kingdom and the United States.

Though general interest in the advisory opinions of the Permanent Court of International Justice has waned of late because of the decline in the Court’s advisory activity and the dormancy of the question of American adherence, there are questions relating to the advisory work of the Court which still command the interest of the serious student. On January 26, 1937, the Council of the League referred to the special committee set up to study the application of the principles of the Covenant the question of the conditions of voting requests for advisory opinions. As appears from the observations of governments as well as from the discussions in the Council and Assembly, the question of the vote necessary to a request for an advisory opinion raises the larger question of the nature of advisory opinions.

The tenth session of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea met in New York from March 9 to April 24, 1981 and resumed in Geneva from August 3 to August 28, 1981. The Drafting Committee and its organs also met from January 12 to February 27 in New York and from June 29 to July 31 in Geneva.

Non-self-governing territories in the past have been too often breeding spots for war. Many contain valuable raw materials or offer rich markets; some command highly desirable shipping or aviation routes; still others offer potential naval and military bases of strategic significance. Such territories frequently become centers of international rivalry or even conflict.

Since the very beginning of its existence the United Nations, like the League of Nations before it, has experienced how difficult it is to define the scope of the most general and fundamental principles of international law in a declaration of legal significance. Today this is still the case, as appears from the efforts undertaken since the establishment four years ago of a United Nations Special Committee, which was given the task of studying in what way and to what extent the primary principles of international law contained in the Charter could yield rules adapted to the changed world situation. Before considering in detail the most recent proceedings of the Special Committee, it seems useful briefly to recall the context within which the Committee started its work.