International law was no more prepared for the dynamics of the present war than was the Maginot school of military strategy. International lawyers had given little serious thought to the legal problems which total war would bring. Consequently, while international arrangements were concluded on special questions (e.g. on aerial warfare), the main body of the 1907 Hague Convention, including the section dealing with military occupation,remained unchanged. Military occupation was still conceived of as a temporary phenomenon with limited objectives. But totalitarian warfare as waged by the Axis powers has had unlimited objectives, aimed at nothing less than the complete political and economic subjugation of the occupied territory. In practice the enemy has recognized no restraints of either law or custom save the threat of immediate retaliation. Far from “respecting, unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country,” as the Hague regulations require, the Axis has systematically destroyed the political and legal order in the occupied territories. It has substituted quislings in the place of duly constituted local authorities, and has employed them for economic as well as political ends.

Early in the afternoon of January 21, 1940, the Japanese steamship Asama Maru, proceeding from Honolulu to Yokohama, was stopped at a point 35 nautical miles off the coast of Japan by a British man-of-war. The British warship boarded the Asama Maru, and, “claiming to act under a right in international law but without explaining in detail the reasons for its actions and without even disclosing its name,” forcibly removed 21 of the 50 Germans on board.

When momentous events take place on the international scene, there are predictable pressures on those who have reputations as international lawyers to give opinions as to the legalities. There are phone calls from reporters, perhaps even student rallies, to say nothing of inquiries from academic colleagues (especially those who ignore the field most of the time). The recent episode in Grenada gives one an opportunity to evaluate what can be done under those pressured circumstances to give an enlightening and useful judgment as to what international law has to say about such an event. As any professor knows, the time constraints of examinations make a difference in the rate at which students can analyze problems, just as there are differences in the amount of information they can dig out of the stacks when a short period is allocated to the exercise. The space limitations that are imposed on the product also make it hard to put forth a coherent and nuanced argument. The more one knows about the topic, the less easy it is to wrap up the matter neatly and certainly. Legal foundations ought to underpin or contain one’s judgments about policy, but they can do that only if there is some real finality to them. How does one grade the performance of the international law community under this test?

Judges of the International Court of Justice have a variety of vehicles through which they may express their judicial opinions. There are, in the first place, the judgments and opinions of the Court—results of the collegial deliberations—to which every judge may contribute. If, however, the judgment or opinion of the Court does not represent “in whole or in part the unanimous opinion of the judges, any judge shall be entitled to deliver a separate opinion.” And, despite misgivings on the part of some scholars early in the experience of the Permanent Court of International Justice, this right conferred by Article 57 of the Statute of the Court has been consistently interpreted as allowing individual and joint separate and dissenting opinions. Finally, Article 95 of the Rules of Court, adopted on April 14, 1978, provides, inter alia, that “[a]ny judge may, if he so desires, attach his individual opinion to the judgment, whether he dissents from the majority or not; a judge who wishes to record his concurrence or dissent without stating his reasons may do so in the form of a declaration.”

An “exclusive preserve” of a state in the UN Secretariat is a post that is continuously filled by nationals of the same state. Virtually from the founding of the United Nations, the Secretariat has observed an “unofficial” practice of exclusive preserves for many senior posts held by nationals of several influential states, including the United States; but its most persistent advocate, and with regard to a particularly wide range of posts, has been the Soviet Union. In view of the past underrepresentation of Soviet nationals in the Secretariat, largely because the Soviet Government insisted that its nationals be recruited only on fixed-term contracts based on secondment from the Government and Soviet institutions, a considerable number of posts were set aside to be filled on a replacement basis. The occupants of those posts were selected by the Secretary-General from a very short list of candidates submitted by the Soviet Government. The object of this Editorial is to assess the impact of the new Soviet policy toward the UN Secretariat, recent General Assembly resolutions and the jurisprudence of the United Nations Administrative Tribunal on the practice of exclusive preserves.

In an earlier issue of this Journal the writer called attention to some of the questions raised by the recent liquor treaties and among them to the question whether legislation is required to make Article II of the treaties effective.

Japan has refused to submit to the decision of the League of Nations which condemns the invasion of Manchuria in September, 1931, and the setting up there of a so-called“independent state of Manchukuo,” and has announced her withdrawal from the League. Should Japan's connection with the League be actually severed at the end of the period of two years' notice required by the Covenant, the continuance of her mandate over certain islands in the Pacific is sure to be called in question. The matter is one that is already disturbing several governments. Japanese statesmen insist that their mandate will not be affected by Japanese withdrawal from the League. Certain German statesmen think that the islands ought to be returned to them.

Speaking before the American Society of International Law, Aleksandr Troianovski, the first Soviet Ambassador to the United States, summed up his views on the basic sources of order in international relations. He began by rejecting the idea of a “supernational support” for international law, since the source of the rules regulating the relations among nations “lies in the nations, and not in a superforce acting from above the nations.”

Since the end of the first "World War—an event widely considered to mark a turning point in the development of international law—several suggestions have been made to negotiate a multilateral treaty aimed at the protection of private foreign investment.