Pursuant to the recent four to one Judgment by a Chamber of the International Court of Justice in the Case Concerning Delimitation of the Maritime Boundary in the Gulf of Maine Area, Canada and the United States are to share Georges Bank. Canada has jurisdiction over approximately one-sixth of the Bank, including the resource-rich “Northeast Peak” and most of the “Northern Edge,” and the United States the remaining area. Since Georges Bank is one of the world’s most productive fishing grounds, and this was consequently a case about fish more than a traditional continental shelf delimitation, the Judgment means that these North American neighbors may have to work out cooperative arrangements for the conservation and management of the shared living resources of Georges Bank. The question naturally arises as to how this outcome was reached, and why it purports to fulfill the fundamental norm of the law of delimitation of maritime boundaries—namely, to achieve an “equitable result.”

The submission by the Government of the United States to the Government of Canada on May 28, 1938, of a rewritten draft of a Great Lakes-St. Lawrence waterway treaty brings to the forefront again the desirability of concluding a comprehensive agreement between the two Governments for a mutually advantageous utilization of the available navigation and power resources along the boundary basin. In view of the heightened interest in both the United States and Canada, a reexamination of the diplomatic correspondence between the United States and Great Britain and Canada since the end of the nineteenth century regarding the diversion of waters in the United States or in Canada which affected interests in the other country is opportune. It is of significance to note the positions taken by the United States and Great Britain and, later, Canada, in diplomatic negotiations and by significant municipal acts, as to the legal rights of the United States and Canada to the use or diversion of (1) boundary waters, (2) waters which are tributary (and entirely within the territory of one country) to boundary waters, and (3) waters of rivers flowing across the boundary. The distinction between the first situation and the second and third is an important one to observe.

Israel has justified the construction of its barrier wall as a nonforcible measure taken in selfdefense to protect its citizens against terrorist attacks emanating from the occupied Palestinian territory. This essay addresses two issues. First, was the International Court of Justice’s conclusion in paragraph 139 of the advisory opinion Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory that “Article 51 of the Charter has no relevance in this case” wellfounded? This question involves consideration of three interrelated substantive aspects of paragraph 139: the Court’s finding that Article 51 was irrelevant because Israel did not claim that the attacks against it were imputable to a foreign state; the relevance of the Court’s reliance on the fact that Israel exercises control over the occupied Palestinian territory; and the Court’s conclusion that the situation differs from the circumstances contemplated in Security Council Resolutions 1368 (2001) and 1373 (2001) and that, accordingly, Israel could not invoke these resolutions in support of its claim to be exercising a right of self-defense. The second issue is whether the approach of the Court to the substantive content of Article 51 can be defended as an appropriate discharge of its judicial function. To avoid undue suspense, let it be said at the outset that paragraph 139 is well-founded, and the Court properly fulfilled its task.

Among the three subjects which the Committee of Experts for the Progressive Codification of International Law considered ripe for codification was the subject of “Responsibility of States for Damage Caused in Their Territory to the Person or Property of Foreigners.” Acting on that assumption, the Committee sent out to the Governments at least three separate documents between 1925 and 1929: first, a Report of its Sub-committee, consisting of Messrs. Guerrero of Salvador, and Wang Chung Hui of China second, a Schedule of Points drawn up by the so-called Preparatory Committee of Experts, a smaller body, and designed to elicit replies from the different governments, presenting their views on different aspects of the general subject; and finally, the Bases of Discussion, consisting of the replies to the Schedule of Points made by some thirty governments, the substance of these replies being then crystallized into propositions called Bases of Discussion, on which The Hague Conference of the governments, called for March 13, 1930, was to conduct its deliberations. Perhaps that Conference was handicapped from the start by the fact that the Guerrero report, which had been circulated, departed materially, in some of its fundamental postulates and premises (representing minority views) from the subsequent Bases of Discussion, which reflected the views of the majority of the replying governments. Of the Latin-American nations, Chile was practically the only country to respond to the Schedule of Points on the Responsibility of States, and then only within the narrowest limits.

The signing of the Constitution for a World Health Organization, on 22 July 1946 in New York City, is likely to be a landmark in the history of international cooperation for public health and medicine. At this ceremony the representatives of sixty-one nations affirmed their intention of bringing all inter-governmental health action under the aegis of a single agency which, it is hoped, will soon embrace the entire family of states. The new “Magna Carta” of health envisages an organization far wider in scope and function than any previous undertaking in this sphere of international collaboration. Still more significant is the new approach to the problem of disease embodied in the WHO Constitution—an approach which takes full cognizance of the revolutionary advances of the past decade in preventive and curative medicine.

The history of diplomacy has been a history of two competing structural conceptions: sovereignty, the barrier that limits state power, and community values, the collective power that overcomes that barrier. In ages past, when the fault line shifted between sovereignty and community, and cracks began to appear in the old legal edifice governing use of force by sovereign against sovereign or community against sovereign, the leading nations of the world gathered at Westphalia, or Vienna, or Versailles, or San Francisco to clarify the contours of the new order and to formulate, however loosely, a set of rules that would govern the use of force for generations to come—rules that recognized states as equals, rules that prohibited aggression, rules that permitted only defensive force. But not this time.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations has recently referred to the goal of building up an international staff of the highest standard of efficiency, competence, and integrity, responsible only to the Organization and with as wide a geographical basis as possible. He acknowledged that the fact that the United Nations is a predominantly political organization inevitably exposes the Secretariat to pressures from many quarters although “Governments have generally made great efforts to respect the terms of Article 100, paragraph 2, of the Charter.…” He expressed the belief that it has been widely recognized that an objective independent Secretariat is in the long run in the best interest of all member states.

Public international air law is based on two principles. The first recognizes each state’s full and absolute sovereignty over the air above its territory and territorial waters, including the right to impose its jurisdiction over such airspace. Thus, a state may require any foreign aircraft in its airspace, even if only briefly in transit, to comply with its air transport regulations, for example, those concerning the aircraft and its crew, navigation, and the environment. This right, however, is subject to those international treaty obligations the state has assumed in the interest of safe and efficient air transport. The Convention on International Civil Aviation (hereinafter referred to as the Chicago Convention), generally regarded as the Magna Charta of public international air law, requires each contracting state to “collaborate in securing the highest practicable degree of uniformity in regulations, standards, procedures and organization in relation to aircraft, personnel, airways and auxiliary services in all matters in which such uniformity will facilitate and improve air navigation.” To this end, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) was granted the power to adopt international standards and recommended practices and procedures dealing with matters such as communication systems and air navigation aids, rules of the air and air traffic control practices, as well as registration and identification of aircraft. Contracting states, however, retained the right to depart from such standards or recommended practices, provided they notified the Organization of the differences between their national regulations and those prescribed by an international standard.

The United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea met at Geneva, Switzerland, from February 24 to April 27, 1958, with representatives of 86 countries present. The Conference, it will be recalled, was convoked by the Secretary General of the United Nations pursuant to Resolution 1105 (XI) adopted by the General Assembly on February 21, 1957.

It has not been established with sufficient clarity and certainty whether a state commits a breach of international law by breaking a contract made by it with an alien. The question needs an answer. It is not one of an entirely theoretical nature. On the answer to it will depend many important consequences. There are four of special significance. First, if the breach of contract is characterized as a breach of international law, the final arbiter of the question whether there had been a breach of contract and of the extent of that breach would be an international court whether as a court of last resort or otherwise. This is the natural consequence of the fact that it is the organs of enforcement of international society that have the power of finally determining questions relating to the breach of legal norms belonging to that society. Municipal courts would not have the final decision. Secondly, the norms applicable by an international court in making such a decision would be the norms of international law and not necessarily the rules of a municipal system of law. International rules should, of course, be applied in determining whether there has been a breach of international law. Thirdly, questions of evidence and procedure relating to the contract would be governed by international law.

Many recent and important treaties contain provisions in favor of third states. The United Nations Charter, for instance, confers upon non-member states the right to participate in the discussion of disputes in which they are involved (Article 32); the right to bring such disputes to the attention of the Security Council or the General Assembly (Article 35); and the right to consult the Security Council with regard to the solution of special economic problems arising from the application of preventive or enforcement measures (Article 50). Also Articles 2 (7) and 81 have been interpreted and applied as conferring rights upon states not Members of the Organization.

During critical phases in the development of a legal system the quality of the craftsmanship which practitioners of the law bring to its service can have a decisive influence on the process of development and on the whole texture of the legal system resulting from that process of development. So it was when the great civilians transformed the law of an overgrown city state into the law of an imperial commonwealth; so it was when the glossators laid the foundations of the modern civil law; so it was when the Bench and Bar of England created the common law; so it is today in the case of international law.

The Test Ban Treaty of August 5, 1963, prohibits nuclear weapon tests or other nuclear explosions in the atmosphere, in outer space, or under water, i.e., in the environments where detection from outside the territory of the testing state is possible. Underground nuclear explosions are not prohibited as long as they do not cause radioactive debris to be present outside the territorial limits of the state under whose jurisdiction or control such explosions are conducted. The parties to the treaty also undertake to refrain from “causing, encouraging, or in any way participating in” the carrying out of explosions anywhere which have any of the prohibited effects. The treaty is, as President Kennedy pointed out in his message to the Senate, “the first concrete result of 18 years of effort by the United States to impose limits on the nuclear arms race.” Similarly Lord Home, as he then was, said as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of the United Kingdom, that the limited test ban in three environments was “a good thing in itself not only first, because it reduces the danger of pollution of the atmosphere, but, secondly, because it makes the first agreement of substance which we have been able to make with the Russians for a very long time.” Mr. Khrushchev, on his part, praised the treaty as a “document of great international significance” and said that “its conclusion means a major success for all people of goodwill who for many years have been actively fighting for the discontinuance of nuclear tests, for disarmament, for peace and international friendship.” It is stated in the Preamble to the treaty that the parties seek to achieve the discontinuance of all test explosions of nuclear weapons for all time and are determined to continue negotiations to this end.