Coexistence, National and International: The First Annual Scientific Meeting of the International Law Association (Canadian Branch)

Extract

All law," as Professor Gregory Tunkin, the former Principal Legal Adviser to the Soviet Foreign Ministry, has remarked, "is a species of coexistence." I take it that Dr. Tunkin means by that that legal norms, if they are to be really meaningful as law-in-action in any community, must proceed on a basis of the reconciliation of the competing claims advanced by the main social interestgroups in that community. The international law of the era of the Soviet-Western détente, that hopefully has succeeded to the erstwhile Cold War conflicts, is based on just such a species of intersystems accommodations and compromises, highlighted of course by the Moscow Test Ban Treaty of August 1963 but represented also in a series of lesser agreements and adjustments of fundamental interests-conflicts. The essence of international law-making under these circumstances, if it is to yield a viable system of norms that actually will operate as law-in-action in the contemporary World Community, becomes one of looking for genuine mutuality and reciprocity of interest as between the main political-ideological groupings in the World Community.