A conspicuous feature of current demands for a more equitable economic order is the idea of “just prices” or more broadly a just relationship of prices. Although the conception of a just price goes back to medieval philosophy, it has not acquired a generally accepted meaning in either economic or juridical thought and it certainly cannot be regarded as a technical term of art in international economic relations. Yet there is no doubt that the concept of the just price (as well as the closely related notion of a just relationship of prices) expresses political demands that are of considerable importance in the development of new international legal and institutional arrangements. It is particularly interesting to note that the concept which has long played a leading role in the grievances of the poor countries has recently received emphasis in the statements of spokesmen for the industrialized countries faced with the soaring prices of oil and minerals. The idea of linking justice to prices may seem to some to be a vain effort to mingle ethical and economic factors (possibly with overtones of medieval metaphysics) but the political realities cannot be wished away and the demands for fairness and equity in international pricing will have to be faced.

On October 30, 1984, French divers located the wreck of the CSS Alabama in 180 feet of water about seven miles off the Normandy coast of Cherbourg. A Confederate raider, the Alabama sank after a battle with the USS Kearsarge on June 19, 1864. French researchers dove to the wreck in November 1987.

Sir Harold Nicholson had it about right. Diplomacy, he said,

Investment disputes have attracted their fair share of missionaries, fanatics, and lawyers in the Western Hemisphere. There may be evidence, though, that some relatively reasonable sceptics are making their voices heard.

On March 24, 1989—Good Friday—President Bush and congressional leaders signed a landmark agreement committing them to support nonlethal aid for the Nicaraguan contras, together with Central American peace efforts. Under this “gentleman’s agreement,” aid would continue through February 1990. But in November 1989, the President must get letters from each of four congressional committees approving the continuation of aid after that month. If a majority of the membership of any one of those committees declines to authorize the letter, the President agreed, he will terminate the aid.

The members of the congress of Vienna who, for the most part, directed the international politics of Europe for the first half of the nineteenth century, have never been accounted as exponents of liberal thought, or as the advocates of liberal policies. But it must be said in behalf of their narrow and, at times, reactionary statesmanship, that it kept the peace in western Europe during the period intervening between the battle of Waterloo, which terminated the military and political activity of the first Napoleon, and the appearance of his nephew in the rôle of a military commander in the Italian campaign of 1859. For the first time in recorded history it was given to the harassed inhabitants of the Rhine provinces to see a full half century of peace, and to enjoy so much as fifty years of fortunate and uninterrupted immunity from the hardships and sacrifices of war.

United States—Standards for Reformulated and Conventional Gasoline. 35ILM 603 (1996).

World Trade Organization Appellate Body, April 29, 1996.

In United States—Standards for Reformulated and Conventional Gasoline (Gasoline), the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization Dispute Settlement Body in its first decision addressed one of the most difficult contemporary issues in international trade— the tension between the growth of international trade and the protection of the global environment. The Appellate Body decided that rules regarding standards for cleanliness of gasoline (Gasoline Rule) adopted under the Clean Air Act by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which required importers of gasoline to meet different standards from those required of domestic refiners, were not justifiable restrictions on trade under the environmental exceptions of Article XX of GATT 1994 (GATT).

The equality of states has been regarded as a basic principle of modern international law. It also constitutes an important source of friction among nations in the present world. For instance, Germany and Japan want equality of armament and colonial rights, France and the United States insist upon equality of security, and China desires the termination of her unequal treaties, while other states may have other aspirations.

The bilateral treaties concluded by Poland and Germany on November 14, 1990, and June 17, 1991, are an ideal illustration of the political and social changes in Central Europe. They were intended to constitute a turning point in the relations between the two neighbors, enemies for centuries that are now starting to construct a common future.

The fifty-third session of the UN Commission on Human Rights took place in Geneva from March 10 to April 18, 1997, with Miroslav Somol of the Czech Republic serving as chairman. More than twenty-three hundred individuals were in attendance, representing fifty-three member and ninety-two observer states, over two hundred nongovernmental organizations, and some forty specialized agencies, UN bodies and other organizations.

Since international law is largely based upon custom, prevalent custom is more likely to evidence the real change than are formal documents. No more striking example of this effect of growing sentiment upon law can be cited than the successive pronouncements of John Marshall regarding the status of enemy property on land in time of war.1 In 1796 he appeared for the State of Virginia in the case of Ware v. Hylton (3 Dallas, 199), and argued that by the law of nations confiscation was justifiable. In 1814, deciding from the bench of the Supreme Court the case of Brown v. United States (8 Cranch, 110), he declared that though the old rigid rule would allow confiscation, prevailing current practice forbade and no nation could sanction confiscation “without obloquy.” In the Percheman case (7 Peters, 51), twenty years later, he announced that the confiscation of private property was contrary to the modern usage of nations “which has become law.”

Political institutions attain their stature largely by organic growth, taking form through a process of evolving practice. In this connection the economic sanctions developed by the United States in the years immediately preceding Pearl Harbor have much significance. As the architects of a new world order now draw up plans for the defense of the international community against war, they can include economic sanctions with greater assurance of American approval than in 1919. For certain types of such sanctions have in the last few years taken their place among our precedents, and the United States may well be expected to view proposals for their use with a more friendly eye than at the close of the first World War.