The notion that a plastics treaty is necessary is gaining traction, but there is less agreement as to its content. Some, including this author, have suggested that a plastics treaty should be modelled on treaties such as the Montreal Protocol, which sets out a broad commitment to end the use of a particular material and then introduce regulations to ban particular forms of that material over time. This approach has an immediate appeal—it sends a signal to states and to industry that they must change their behaviors and products, while giving time to adapt to the new regulation and develop alternative materials or ways of working. The potential drawback of this approach is that some states simply will not accept such rigid standards. In addition, some states may prefer a second approach that is more obviously rooted in the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, which assigns different obligations to parties according to their respective capacities. Within the climate change regime, the Paris Agreement takes both approaches, asking states to set their own nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to emissions reductions (common but differentiated responsibilities) and then to revise these NDCs over time through an iterative process to deliver progressively more ambitious targets for emissions reduction (moving toward a ban) or mitigation. In reality, neither approach is entirely suited to regulating plastics, so a new approach to treaty-making is required. This new approach should focus on the outcomes desired rather than the practices that need to be regulated.

Members of the American Society of International Law are by inference charged by the Constitution of their Society with doing all that is possible to promote the study and development of international law and the conduct of international affairs on the basis of law and justice. For this purpose it is not sufficient to study and advocate the development of the law itself or for its own sake. Much attention must be given, certainly much more than has been given in the past, to the second section of the mandate, partly because of its own importance and partly to provide the kind of international situation where the law can thrive and be effective— which in turn is calculated to promote peace and justice. Friends of international law cannot afford to evade even the most difficult and delicate issues in the field of international relations on the ground that they are purely political in character.

How far does U.S. law reach beyond U.S. borders? In principle, Congress could extend its laws as far as it likes, but Congress often fails to make its intentions clear. Many statutes do not specify their geographic scope, instead using general terms that have no inherent limit. Federal courts have long employed interpretive rules, or canons, to guide their construction of such statutes. The canon most commonly cited is the presumption against extraterritoriality, which states that “legislation of Congress, unless a contrary intent appears, is meant to apply only within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.” The simplicity of this language masks difficult questions. Does the “territorial jurisdiction of the United States” include only territory within the national boundaries, or does it extend to territory outside those boundaries but within U.S. control? How should the presumption apply to actions taken abroad that cause effects within U.S. territory, however defined? What implications does the presumption have for situations within U.S. territory but also within the jurisdiction of another country, such as foreign ships in a U.S. port? When the presumption does apply, what evidence of “contrary intent” is necessary to overcome it?

The treaties for the protection of minorities were not made under the illusion that they would take from the particular state the grave burden of settling the differences resulting from the divergent nationality of its citizens. In order to prevent the internal disputes and quarrels of the state from becoming the cause for intervention by other states, the treaties created special processes by which such disputes can be legally settled. With a view to the accurate application of these provisions it was indispensable to establish a method of procedure, a system which might very well be compared in the field of constitutional law to that of the organic decrees which are indispensable for the execution of certain of the principles forming the kernel of each constitution.

Migration is already a significant global phenomenon, and it is likely to become more so. According to a recent World Bank report, there are two hundred million international migrants. The study reports that “migration pressures” will continue “for the foreseeable future.” It will take “decades” to close income gaps between developed and developing countries; in 2015, the ratio between the average income of the high-income countries and that of the low-income countries stood at 70:1. A “well-documented demographic divergence” will add further pressure: “Population aging will produce large labor-market imbalances and fiscal pressures in high-income countries as the tax base narrows and the cost of caring for the old surges.” This increase in demand will complement an increase in supply. “If current fertility and national employment rates remain as they are in the developing world,” the Bank reports, by 2050 “nearly 900 million [will be] in search of work.” Climate change and disasters will have a more modest impact on the international level, although “increased drought and desertification, rising sea levels, repeated crop failures, and more intense and frequent storms are likely to increase internal migration.” And these numbers—measuring persons outside their home country for more than a year—do not include hundreds of millions of persons who cross international borders for shorter periods of time: tourists, students, temporary workers, business persons, asylum-seekers.

It is generally agreed that the establishment of the Permanent Court of International Justice brought about a decisive advance in the development of arbitration. It not only made possible the elimination of the occasional element of arbitration by substituting for it a permanent institution capable of creating a real case law, but it also removed a difficulty which until then had been insuperable, viz., the question of the composition of an arbitral tribunal.

With the enactment on December 19, 1942, of the misnamed “Settlement of Mexican Claims Act of 1942,” American nationals with claims based upon the international responsibility of Mexico for acts or omissions in contravention of international law appear likely to receive long-delayed satisfaction. Some of the claims are more than 60 years old. Awards were made by the United States-Mexican General Claims Commission in favor of some of the claimants more than 15 years ago, but to date no money has been paid to the beneficiaries of these awards. Various factors appear to have made this claims arbitration one of the most dilatory, inefficient, and unfortunate in our history. Claimants were notoriously lax in presenting evidence to the State Department, although in some cases they appear to have been hindered by the Mexican Government from obtaining necessary evidence in Mexico. The preambles to three conventions extending the life of the General Claims Commission allege that “it now appears” or “it has been found” that the Commission could not hear, examine, and decide the claims within the time limit fixed; but Judge Fred K. Nielsen, American Commissioner on that court, has pointed out with some vigor that it was not the Commission, so much as the failure of American counsel and the Department of State, to prepare cases for presentation to the Commission, which caused the delay and paucity of decisions. Resignations of Commissioners, protracted delays in replacing them, antagonisms between Commissioners, and lack of cooperation by the Mexican Government were other factors contributing to the 19-year delay in effecting a settlement.

When the Security Council of the United Nations investigates an event or situation at the scene, it establishes a credible factual basis for its consideration of the situation, and the situation itself may be stabilized by the presence of the investigators. These important benefits may involve concomitant difficulties for the state in whose territory the investigation occurs, since the presence of international investigators may be conceived of as a limitation of its sovereignty. Objections may also arise from states seeking to obscure the realities of the situation being investigated, or from states which resist as a matter of principle any functions of international organizations which appear to derogate from state sovereignty.

The purported nationalization of the Universal Company of the Suez Maritime Canal by the Egyptian Decree of July 26, 1956, refreshed the interest of the international community in the long-lingering dispute over restrictions imposed by Egypt on the passage of cargoes bound for Israeli ports and the prohibition of the passage of Israeli ships through the Suez Canal.

On January 11, 1957, the United States rejected a request of the Government of Switzerland to submit the Interhandel controversy to arbitration or conciliation in conformity with the provisions of the United States-Swiss Treaty of Arbitration and Conciliation of February 16, 1931. The refusal to submit the controversy to arbitration was declared to be “on the ground that the matter does not involve a dispute falling within the scope of the obligation to have recourse to arbitration” and the refusal to comply with the conciliation provisions of the treaty was on the ground that they “would necessarily be unproductive.”

One of the most striking features of Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion in the U.S. Supreme Court’s judgment in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. is how it pays homage to foreign governments’ opposition to the extraterritorial application of the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), as voiced most prominently from European foreign ministries. “[F]oreign policy concerns” and the overarching goal to avoid diplomatic tensions with foreign sovereigns are themes heavily informing the Roberts opinion. The majority found the presumption against extraterritoriality applicable to the ATS in large part due to fear of “unwarranted judicial interference in the conduct of [U.S.] foreign policy” if the Court allowed the ATS to “reach conduct occurring in the territory of a foreign sovereign.” In that light, the Kiobel judgment can be understood primarily as a decision prohibiting the overreach of U.S. law and protecting jurisdictional prerogatives of lex loci delicti and state of incorporation alike.

It has been customary to take Grotius's book for the starting point of one of the best marked eras in the history of jurisprudence. Any account of the development of theories of justice is likely to begin the modern history of the subject with Grotius, and to put as a classical epoch a period designated as “from Grotius to Kant.” Any account of theories of law is likely to set off a period from the revived study of Roman law in the Italian universities of the twelfth century to Grotius, and another from Grotius to the breaking up of the eighteenth century law-of-nature school. In almost all accounts of the history of the science of law, Grotius stands as marking a turning point.

In more than one sense the European Communities are a frontier land of modern international organization. One aspect of the work of the European Economic Community which has thus far escaped the attention lavished on other facets is the multi-pronged effort to reduce the differences among the national laws of the member states. Stated more affirmatively, this is an effort to make the national legal systems of the member states more similar, to “assimilate” them. This effort has much in common with the “uniform law” movement in the United States and with the “unification-of-law” movement which has flourished on the Continent in this century. But it differs from these “uniformity” and “unification” movements in at least two respects