In contrast to the withholding practices of certain member states in respect of part of their assessed contributions to the budget of the United Nations, United States withholding began rather recently. U.S. withholding started in 1980 and, until 1985, applied only to specific programs and decisions. Previously, in 1978, the Legal Adviser of the Department of State had concluded in a memorandum of law that Article 17 of the UN Charter “impose[s] a legal obligation on members to pay the amount assessed to them by the General Assembly.” Referring to the U.S. written statement submitted to the International Court of Justice in Certain Expenses of the United Nations, he added: “Accordingly, the General Assembly’s adoption and apportionment of the Organization’s expenses create a binding international legal obligation on the part of State Members to pay their assessed shares.” In his view, there was apparently no possible exception to this obligation.

In 1972 a historic attempt to create the world’s first international legal regime banning the development and possession of an entire class of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) culminated in the conclusion of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). Crippled by key compromises made by the great powers in pursuit of various self-interested security objectives in the context of the Cold War, the Convention is fundamentally flawed. Although the BWC purports to oudaw the development and possession of all biological weapons, deadlier and more sophisticated biological weapons than were imaginable in 1972 can now be and have been produced, as evidenced in October 2001 by two letters sent to the Capitol Hill offices of Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. These letters reportedly contained direatening notes and a dangerous and sophisticated form of “weapons-grade” anthrax spores. Even though both die sender of these letters and the source of the anthrax remain unknown, the technical sophistication of the spores led some experts to suggest that the attacker was supported by a U.S. “biodefense” laboratory or an advanced foreign-state-run biological weapons (BW) facility because the spores could not have been produced by an amateur working in his basement.

At Bayonne, on Tuesday before the Feast of St. Barnabas the Apostle, in the year 1295, John, lieutenant in Gascony of the King of England, signed a letter addressed to all the officers of the King. At Canterbury, on October 3 of the same year, John's uncle, Edward I, King of England and Duke of Acquitaine, put his seal on a document addressed to his officers, in which he included John's letter in full and ratified its provisions subject to two briefly-stated conditions.

At the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, governments decided to cooperate “in an expeditious and more determined manner” to develop international law regarding liability and compensation for transnational environmental damage. UNCED, however, did not decide whether this development should proceed broadly through codification of principles or rules encompassing all types of transnational environmental damage or more narrowly through the establishment of liability and compensation regimes tailored to specific issues of environmental damage.

One of the characteristic phenomena of contemporary international life is the proliferation of human rights instruments and systems of supervision. In addition to the Charter of the United Nations and comprehensive global conventions such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Economic Covenant) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Political Covenant), instruments have been adopted within the United Nations or the specialized agencies to govern particular aspects of human rights (e.g., racial discrimination, rights of women) and within regional organizations (e.g., the Council of Europe, the Organization of American States) to govern both general and particular aspects of human rights. In the United Nations, the general practice has been for each normative instrument to create its own system of supervision whenever such systems have been established. Typically, each organ of supervision applies only the norms adopted in the specific “founding” instrument, rather than the entire corpus juris of international human rights or even all of the instruments comprising the International Bill of Human Rights, i.e., the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Universal Declaration), the Economic Covenant, the Political Covenant, and the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This proliferation of normative instruments and systems of supervision, which is similar to the proliferation that has given rise to difficult questions of coordination within and between international organizations in the fields of budget, programming, and administration, has led to overlapping jurisdiction and even to conflicts between the legislative and supervisory competence, or claims of competence, of various international bodies. The object of this article is not to compile or map out all the possible conflict areas or to undertake a detailed analysis of the conflicts, whether real or imaginary. Its more modest purpose is to present a broad panorama of the problems, directions, and policy. These matters merit attention, even though political and institutional reasons may make major reforms impossible for the time being. The questions to be discussed are relevant to three major fields of international law: treaties, human rights, and international organizations. While substantive problems of “legislation” or norm making are closely related to problems of supervision or implementation, normative problems will be focused upon first, and problems of supervision second.

In their eagerness to justify the “United States perspective” on the Kampala definition of the crime of aggression and on the International Criminal Court (ICC), Koh and Buchwald tend to invent imaginary enemies and to ascribe to them views that they do not actually hold. In so doing, the authors weaken a thesis that, in some respects, is not devoid of interest. From at least two points of view, however, their article is paradoxical, if not pathetic—exactly like the U.S. position.

The scope of international law steadily widens. In addition to the traditional concerns of direct relations between states such as warfare and diplomatic immunity, it now includes human rights, labor law and environmental policy, which deal with the relations of a state with its own citizens and territory.

Strange as it may seem, a coherent theory of expropriation as a separate institution has not been developed in the literature of international law. For the most part only partial aspects of the subject have been treated, and under widely differing categories, e.g., under the general title of “ rights of foreigners,” or “ denial of justice,” or “ international responsibility of states.” But international practice, as embodied in diplomatic and judicial cases, yields sufficient material from which to develop a theory of expropriation as a coherent body of rules of positive international law.

A pattern of affording impunity to local power brokers throughout Africa pervades the application of international criminal law (ICL) in Africa. The International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation into Uganda is a notorious but representative example, although similar analyses can be made of the Central African Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Libya. In Uganda, only members of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) have been indicted for international crimes, even though the United Nations, international human rights groups, and local NGOs have documented years of abuses perpetrated by government troops and local auxiliary units, often against the same populations victimized by the LRA. The ICC is thereby implicated in the power structures and political arrangements of a repressive state that both combats the LRA and often brutalizes the civilian populations of northern Uganda. Inserting itself into Uganda, the ICC becomes a partisan player in the endgame of a civil war that extends back over a generation, and is itself rooted in ethnic and tribal animosities cultivated through 19th century Euro-colonial benedictions of favor. Here, the ICC and the war it adjudicates become surprising bedfellows, repurposed by local elites for the consolidation of domestic power.

This Article argues that international investment agreements (IIAs) serve a dual economic function—to discipline host country policies that impose international externalities on foreign investors, and to curtail inefficient risks associated with agency costs, risk aversion, asymmetric information, and time inconsistency problems that uneconomically increase the cost of imported capital in host countries. It draws on the economic analysis to explain central features of IIAs and their evolution over time, and to address various controversial issues in international investment litigation.

International water law (IWL) principles are often called upon to address disagreements and conflict between riparian states to a shared watercourse, with various parties invoking them to guide states’ behavior towards cooperative solutions that benefit the water resources as well as broader regional cooperation and peace. This essay argues that it is particularly important to acknowledge the role IWL principles play in negotiation processes, that is, in an ex ante and non-judicial function, providing a framework for cooperation and contributing to lawmaking, which makes them important tools of international relations and water diplomacy. First, IWL principles are particularly relevant in negotiation processes. IWL principles are thus not only relevant to legal adjudication or enforcement, but are also tools of international relations and diplomacy. Additionally, in their ex ante role, in the context of negotiations or other non-judicial interactions between riparian states, IWL principles can pose an inherent dilemma, as they can both provide a framework for negotiations and be the focus of negotiations, each dimension having implications for the effectiveness of negotiations and the likelihood of negotiated compromise outcomes. Third, in spite of this inherent dilemma and its possible negative repercussions on negotiation outcomes, the use of IWL principles in negotiations has a lawmaking function, contributing to the further development and strengthening of the overall legal regime for governing shared watercourses.

The distinction found in certain cases between “self-executing” and “non-self-executing” treaties is a judicially invented notion that is patently inconsistent with express language in the Constitution affirming that “all Treaties … shall be the supreme Law of the Land.” Indeed, such a distinction may involve the most glaring of attempts to deviate from the specific text of the Constitution. For some 40 years after the formation of the Constitution, President George Washington’s recognition in 1796 that “every Treaty [properly ratified]… thenceforward becomes the law of the land” was widely shared. Yet today not all treaties are thought to be capable of operating as supreme federal law of their own effect.

On March 8, 2005, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a declaration on human cloning (the Declaration) by a recorded vote of 84 to 34, with 37 abstentions.1 The Declaration culminated an effort that had commenced in 2001 with a proposal by France and Germany for a convention against reproductive cloning of human beings. The three-and-ahalf- year negotiation that followed was intense and emotionally charged with religious and cultural overtones; at times, participants seemed to feel hopelessly mired. The Declaration that was ultimately adopted was often referred to as a “political declaration,” apparently as a way of emphasizing the degree of compromise reflected in the text, and also as away of minimizing its normative value. The negotiation, which had originally been understood as limited to the narrow bioethics issue of prohibiting the making of cloned babies, led to profound discussions on human rights, cultural and religious diversities, and their interaction and priorities in case of conflict. Ultimately, neither the Declaration nor its negotiating history answered these difficult questions. But they provided a glimpse of the difficulties and impasses international lawmaking will confront when negotiations lose a secular tone.

In the decade since the Convention on the Continental Shelf was framed at Geneva, the possibilities of reaching and using the mineral resources of the ocean have continued to open up at an unprecedented rate. Exploitation of oil and gas deposits in the continental shelves is now a commonplace, and such production has become an important part of the world’s normal supply. The technological frontier, pushed forward by the explosion of interest in the ocean sciences during the last few years, is now advancing into the deep sea beyond the limits of the geographical shelves, and the pace may be expected to accelerate in the next decade.

The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention) in December 1948. A representative of the United States signed the Convention, and President Truman later transmitted it to the Senate with a request that it give its advice and consent to ratification. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee held hearings on the Convention in 1950. It has since held hearings on four occasions (1970, 1971, 1977 and 1981), and favorably reported the Convention to the Senate four times (1970, 1971, 1973 and 1976). However, the Senate has failed to act; a resolution of ratification was debated on the floor in 1973-1974, but it fell victim to a filibuster and the Convention remains in committee.

For the first time the International Court of Justice has squarely faced and ruled upon the right of a third state to intervene in a case to which two other states are parties. The litigation was the Case Concerning the Continental Shelf (Tunisia/Libyan Arab Jamahiriya), Application of Malta for Permission to Intervene, Judgment of April 14, 1981. The Court unanimously denied permission to intervene, but three judges appended separate opinions which contain matters of considerable interest.

Real problems, like the problem posed, are not amenable to simple solutions. Human rights abuses in internal conflicts usually have roots deep in history and the collective psyche of the individuals and groups involved. To prevent them, the certain prospect of a swift punitive reaction on the international plane might have a useful deterrent effect. But if a violent conflict or genocide is in progress, the expectation of punishment may not by itself be likely to end the conflict. Ironically, it may prolong the plight of the persecuted, since persecutors may conclude that they have no alternative but to fight to the bitter end to avoid the consequences of their misdeeds. To deal with major incidents of unauthorized coercion and violence, an amnesty for the violators might contribute to a lessening of the toll in blood of a particular ethnic or religious rage. But that, again, might be an incomplete reaction, since the victims of the atrocities committed will not find solace, satisfaction or rehabilitation. Nor will persons who may be pathologically violent be removed from circulation. Where society remains unreconciled, jarred, conflicted—in a state of continual animosity between warring families, clans or ethnic, religious or social groups—“cold” war might heat up and erupt at any time in the future even more violently than before. Thus, truth commissions have been established in various contexts at least to shine the light of searching inquiry on situations in which truth has always been the first casualty. Still, such agencies alone might not suffice to bring about social reconciliation and restoration. Neither might bodies set up to mete out justice in the form of civil compensation. International criminal courts may send a message to people elsewhere contemplating massive violations, but they may do nothing to reconstruct the civil society that has been disrupted.

The question of recognition of the Central People’s Republic of China, and the withdrawal of recognition of the Nationalist regime in Formosa, is from time to time a matter of moment in the internal politics of certain of the Pacific nations. Few of the proponents of recognition would advocate handing Formosa to the mainland government; they would prefer the island to be internationalized, neutralized, or made independent under United Nations auspices and guarantee. In the policy discussions on the question, various views of the legal competence of the Allies or of the United Nations to dispose of Formosa have been advanced. It is the purpose of this paper to examine these views in turn and indicate on which view the question of Formosa’s future can be severed from the question of recognition.

The norms and mechanisms for international prosecution of humanitarian law and mass human rights violations have been refined in the 1990s to include affirmation of the principle that separate (or “affirmative”) defenses to individual liability are admissible in international criminal law. Explicit recognition of the availability and nature of separate defenses is found in the statute of the international criminal court (ICC). Indirect application is found to a very limited extent in the Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), but not in the Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). Moreover, although the Appeals Chamber of the ICTY has rejected the argument that duress is a complete defense under customary international law or general principles of law to a charge of crimes against humanity involving the taking of innocent lives, it has implicidy accepted that duress could be available in other circumstances.