We are witnessing today a remarkable evolution toward organized international justice. Such an evolution is inevitable in any permanent society of states, just as much as the growth of law and the establishment of organs of justice are inevitable in any lasting society of individuals. Our immediate and pressing interest in relation to this great development of international justice is this: What should be the r61e of our country? Shall the United States, faithful to the liberal arbitration policy which characterized her earlier history, adopt obligatory arbitration for the peaceful settlement of international disputes? This question may soon be determined when the Senate comes to consider the new Pan American Arbitration Treaty.

On September 15, 1930, the State Board of Commerce and Navigation of New Jersey made a ruling that aircraft would not be permitted to land on any New Jersey waters above tidewater within the jurisdiction of the state. The application had been made for permission to operate a five passenger flying boat between Nolan's Point, Lake Hopatcong, a vacation resort, and New York City, and to set off a portion of the lake to make a landing place for the hydroairplane. It was stated that other inland waters in New Jersey were being used for a similar purpose, and the ground of the refusal was that aircraft flying from water constituted a menace to surface navigation. This ruling created considerable newspaper comment and aroused vigorous protest from persons interested in aviation, and by order of October 20, 1930, the ruling was limited to Lake Hopatcong.

Under what circumstances is a state entitled to claim immunity from suit in the courts of another state? It is an old problem which assumes new importance in the face of the steadily enlarging scope of governmental commercial enterprise. Considerable difference of opinion has manifested itself. In England and the United States, where the principle of the immunity of the sovereign before the courts of its own state has long been firmly entrenched, there has been a decided reluctance to open the door to suits against foreign states, however commercial in character the controversy may be. On the Continent a more liberal tendency has long been making itself felt. On general principles, the subject would seem to be one to invite regulation by international agreement.

Although diplomatic representatives enjoy certain immunities in the countries to which they are accredited, they are not free to disregard the laws of the state receiving them. When a diplomatic representative breaks the local law, the ordinary procedure and the usual sanctions cannot always be applied. However, the individual or the state injured by infraction of the law by the diplomatic representative is protected by a number of sanctions and means of applying them. The purpose of this study is to examine their effectiveness.

The advisability of permitting judges from litigant states to participate in hearings before international judicial tribunals has been a subject of disagreement on several occasions. It provoked serious controversy for the first time at the Hague Conference of 1907, when the proposed Court of Arbitral Justice was under discussion. Recently it has received even more attention in connection with the establishment of the Permanent Court of International Justice and in discussions of amendments to the Statute of the court and its rules.

The shaping of agreements which are to impose new obligations upon states requires regard for political experience as well as high technical skill. The record of past effort seems to show that this is particularly true of treaties for pacific settlement. Among the problems incident to the construction of treaties for the arbitral settlement of future disputes, perhaps none is more central than that of the form in which the right actually to initiate arbitral proceedings is set forth. It is obvious that academic schemes which would disregard the dignity of public entities and suddenly abolish the distinction between states and individuals as parties litigant, leave much to be desired. On the other hand, the object of a treaty may be defeated by subtle preservatives of the full freedom of ction by the parties, or by what has been called a “misguided passion for juristic definition” on the part of draftsmen. It has long been recognized that unless the part of a general agreement covering the method of referring disputes is adequate, a strict construction of the instrument may leave it little more than the expression of a noble wish. Evasion or frank disregard may easily follow.

Viewed from the functional attitude, few aspects of international government offer more difficult problems than the constitutional process for negotiating, ratifying, executing and revising interstate agreements. Defects in the organizations for international cooperation are matched by imperfections in the internal machinery for asserting the will of states in collective undertakings. Certainly the constitutional development of the control of foreign policy has not kept pace with recent progress in international government as typified by the League of Nations and the International Labor Organization. The World War brought a more liberal control of foreign affairs in Germany and Austria. But in most countries, constitutional development in the supervision of the foreign office moves more slowly than in other fields of public law; and in all countries proposed changes in the mechanism of the regulation of international relations meets the powerful resistance of conservatism and national prejudice.

Since the close of the World War, there has been a continuous and often acrimonious discussion of the issues involved in the war debts of the Allied Powers to the Government of the United States. In estimating the mutual obligations of debtor and creditor governments, the issues involved in the “ repudiated debts” of the Southern States have been revived anew. In the British Parliament the matter has flared up again. On April 1,1925, Austen Chamberlain stated that His Majesty's Government had never made representations on the subject to Washington. “ I hope,” he said, “ that my noble friend (Lady Astor) will apply her persuasive eloquence to the legislatures and governments of those states.” On March 15, 1923, Stanley Baldwin, and on April 14, 1924, Ramsay MacDonald, had answered questions to the same effect. During the London Naval Conference of 1930, a debate on these debts took place in the House of Lords. On both sides of the ocean it has been suggested that the amount of the unpaid bonds be deducted from the amounts due to our government from those European Powers whose nationals now hold these state bonds.

The Statute and Rules of the Permanent Court of International Justice are only remotely analogous to the detailed codes of civil procedure with which lawyers practising before municipal courts are familiar. The instruments governing the procedure of the Permanent Court are sketch maps rather than meticulously detailed charts for the procedural voyage. Nor is the body of tradition of international arbitral procedure sufficiently developed to furnish reliable guides in all circumstances. Of necessity, the practice of the court must develop out of the cases which come before it. The method of growth of its procedural law finds typical illustration in the question of the treatment, and, in particular of the amendment, of the conclusions of the parties.

The International Technical Consulting Committee on Radio Communication, commonly known as the C.C.I.R. from the initial letters of the French title, had its origin in the International Radio Convention signed at Washington in 1927. The conference which drafted that convention was closely divided upon the question of setting up the new committee. Those delegations which opposed the idea of creating any committee to meet between conferences succeeded in having the text of the article providing for the committee drafted so as to limit the powers of the committee far more than the proponents of the new body desired.