In the last decade, many political scientists, economists and lawyers have suggested that national economic and regulatory systems may be converging globally. Economic, ideological and sociological factors, as well as action by the world’s great powers, may be facilitating cross-national convergence of economic systems and the globalization of some sectors. Globalization of the telecommunications industry and cross-national convergence of related national laws may serve as one of the stronger examples of this phenomenon.

The lowered national barriers to global trade reveal opportunities for a world without parochial frontiers. One of these opportunities lies in the area of competition law. Competition law is designed to enhance the economic welfare of people by,among other things, breaking down private barriers and preventing the creation and misuse of corporate power through combinations and monopolistic strategies.

On July 8, 1996, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) responded to requests by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) for advisory opinions on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons. These opinions deserve careful attention, and have already been the subject of considerable scholarly commentary.

Various forces and tendencies contending in the world of ideas bear directly on the identity of each person. The nation, the tribe, the state, the “ethnie” or sociocultural group, international institutions, and several nongovernmental transnational actors, including the great religions—all contend for adherents. Two things stand out in this cacophony: first, that individuals, nowadays, may have more than one affiliation; and, second, that affiliative choices increasingly can be made by individuals acting autonomously.

Since its first transatlantic use in 1901, the radio has proven a remarkably powerful and versatile tool. It was used to incite racial hatred in Nazi Germany, Bosnia and Rwanda. Through Vatican Radio and other outlets, it has been harnessed to inspire love and peace. It has been used as an implement both to wage war and to coordinate relief activities in the aftermath of disaster. International broadcast stations like Radio Free Europe and Radio Martí have been viewed by some as a force of liberation, and by others as a tool of imperialism and hegemony.

The Foreign Claims Settlement Commission (Commission or FCSC) was granted jurisdiction to determine the validity and amounts of certain claims by U.S. nationals against Iran by the Iran Claims Act and the 1990 Settlement Agreement (lump sum settlement) between the United States and Iran. The Iran Claims Act, a 1985 statute enacted in anticipation of the lump sum agreement settling U.S. “small claims” against Iran, required the Commission to apply:

1. (1) the terms of any settlement agreement [lump sum settlement];

2. (2) the relevant provisions of the Declarations of the Government of the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria of January 19, 1981, giving consideration to interpretations thereof by the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal; and

3. (3) applicable principles of international law, justice, and equity.

We have previously argued that international environmental law does not adequately promote environmental security because it has failed to adopt an ecosystem orientation. In this paper we suggest that environmental security in the context of freshwater resources can only be achieved through a sophisticated understanding of regime formation and elaboration, linked with a determined pursuit of ecosystem orientation. Our underlying assumptions are twofold. First, the protection of shared water supplies is a “good” worth promoting, whether for intrinsic or instrumental reasons. Second, whenever a resource is shared, particularly a resource that can easily be exhausted or degraded,disputes between the states involved are inevitable. Perhaps surprisingly, we have suggested that the security dimension of the problem relates not only to the potential for disputes, but also—even primarily—to the first of our underlying assumptions. Thus,scarcities of resources should also cause concern when they threaten to undermine either the way of life of a given human population or internal structures of governance and activity through the fostering of subnational conflict and the significant reduction of options for action. In this sense we agree with Richard Ullman's now-famous attempt to redefine the very concept of security. In his view, and ours, a threat to security includes

Before 1991, the relationship between the protection of the environment and international trade was an arcane specialty that attracted little attention. In 1971 the GATT Council established a Working Group on Environmental Measures and International Trade. This group did not even meet for over twenty years.

Everything changed with the decision in the Tuna/Dolphin I case, in which a GATT dispute resolution panel declared a United States embargo on tuna caught by fishing methods causing high dolphin mortality to be illegal. The Tuna/Dolphin I decision produced an explosion of rhetoric in both learned journals and the popular press. It was also a very interesting clash of very different “cultures,” trade specialists versus environmentalists. At die outset, neither group knew much about the other. Now, however, the legal and political issues have been identified and ventilated, mutual understanding has increased, and the process has begun to reconcile two values that are absolutely essential to the well-being of mankind: protection of the environment and international free trade.

In the last few years, many proposals have been made requiring either changes in the administration and financing of the United Nations or a revision of the Charter of the United Nations. While some progress has been made in the first category of problems, to the extent that they require primarily changes in the working of the United Nations Secretariat, it became quite obvious that a revision of the Charter is not likely to be made in the near future. It may be possible, however, to achieve important changes in the functioning of the principal organs of the United Nations—the Security Council, the General Assembly and the International Court of Justice—without revision. Pending a change in the international situation, various steps can be taken in the interim that would considerably improve the functioning of these organs, and achieve some of the desirable goals by measures that, while not ideal, will provide practical solutions for a few important problems. Several such solutions are investigated in the three sections of this essay.

The recent sudden upsurge of interest in Swiss behavior during and after World War II seems to call for a brief review of the international law issues that were relevant to that country’s decisions. Many of them, in particular the law of neutrals, have become obsolete and are obviously not understood by many commentators. Of course, to reach a judgment that the behavior of Switzerland was compatible with the rules of international law then in effect does not dispose of issues of humanity and morality. But it does contribute to explaining Swiss behavior, particularly since the Government in Bern was quite legalistic in its approach to the questions of the time.

Growing awareness of the economic exploitation of millions of children around the world has catapulted the issue of child labor into the public eye and brought it to the forefront of debate within governments, international organizations and the business sector. Arousing diverse interests, the debate juxtaposes the multilateral trade regime with international law governing labor standards and human rights. Each of the charters establishing the primary international organizations for cooperation in those areas is premised on the interdependence of economic and social progress. Nonetheless, the legal norms governing the various regimes differ in their scope and application to child labor, and formal linkages do not exist between the multilateral trade regime and international supervisory bodies dealing with labor standards and human rights.

There is an abundant literature on the subject of state contract awards, including matters concerning recognition and enforcement, and related issues of sovereign immunity. For the most part, however, the studies that have been published tend to focus on spectacular situations involving bitter and protracted litigation in the aftermath of such well-known awards as those between the SEEE and Yugoslavia, SPP and Egypt, and LIAMCO and Libya.

On January 7, 1997, President William J. Clinton transmitted to the Senate for advice and consent to ratification the following Protocols to the 1980 Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects: (A) the amended Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby-traps and Other Devices, adopted at Geneva on May 3, 1996 (Protocol II, or amended Mines Protocol); (B) the Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Incendiary Weapons, adopted at Geneva on October 10, 1980 (Protocol III, or the Incendiary Weapons Protocol) ; and (C) the Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons, adopted at Geneva on May 3, 1996 (Protocol IV).

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