This article is divided into four parts. The first aims to place the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea in its historical context. The second describes some aspects of the first three sessions of that Conference (1973–1975). In the third an account of major specific interests and conflicts which have appeared in this Conference is given. Finally, some tentative conclusions are drawn—tentative, because the Conference has not yet completed its labours.

During its first session (1949) the newly established International Law Commission, set up by the General Assembly in accordance with the provision of Article 13 of the Charter relating to the codification and progressive development of international law, included the topics of the régime of the high seas and the régime of territorial waters in its provisional list of fourteen topics selected for codification. It placed the régime of the high seas on its priority list, and appointed Professor J.P.A. François (The Netherlands) as special rapporteur. At the recommendation of the General Assembly in resolution 374 (IV) of 6 December 1949 the Commission in 1950 included the régime of territorial waters on its priority list, and in 1951 it initiated work on that topic, for which Professor François was also designated special rapporteur. The Commission was heavily occupied with both these topics until 1956.

Chapter 4 of the new Israeli Contracts (General Part) Law, 1973, introduces the concept of a contract in favour of a third party, while granting express recognition to the right of a third party beneficiary. Even those, (including the author) who maintain, that the right of a third party beneficiary could and should be derived, even before the commencement of the new Law, from the general principles and premises of the old Israeli law of contract, cannot fail to see in the above-mentioned chapter an important innovation in the Israeli legal system.

This paper is a comparative analysis of the institution of third party beneficiary. The analysis will consist of a presentation and critical examination of the central concepts and doctrines involved in the institution under discussion, and it will be combined with a comparative survey of the arrangements adopted in various legal systems. The choice of this approach stems from the particular circumstances of the new legislation.

While in most countries, comparative legal research is a luxury, in Israel it is a necessity. The new legislation in private law is inspired to a great extent by Continental codifications. As far as the law of contract is concerned, Israel is now in the process of becoming a “mixed jurisdiction”: departing from the common law tradition and technique, and heading towards an independent body of law, derived from various sources, mainly Continental in both substance and form.

It is perhaps paradoxical that the spread of nationalism in modern times has been accompanied by a counter-movement for the establishment of broader units of government, not only internationally, where plans and projects for some form of world government go back to at least the 17th century, but regionally as well. This study is concerned with the local or regional expression of integration, called federalism or federation.

Clearly inspired, if not directly and immediately affected, by the example of the United States, the federal movement made headway in the 19th century, but it is largely since the end of the Second World War and the demise of colonialism, that its dimensions have grown. Although its success generally is rather doubtful—there appears to be a kind of empiric rule that the first fifteen are crucial—the retreat, so to speak, from particularism and attempts to advance to geographically broader units of government have persisted.

Although some aspects of intellectual freedom embodied in the concept of academic freedom find their sources in earlier times, the modern development of the doctrine is largely derived from the nineteenth century German concepts of lehrfreiheit and lernfreiheit—freedom of teaching and learning respectively. The basic concept was that a university faculty member was free to teach what and how he thought best and students were free to learn what and how they thought best, with university authorities or external agencies such as governments imposing only the most minimal restraints on either teacher or student. The professor and student were viewed as engaged in a typically nineteenth century concept of laissez-faire, with the optimum situation being that of the least possible restriction on the teaching and learning process.

Part of this concept—primarily that of freedom of teaching—crossed the Atlantic and found expression in the United States. This article will explore the meaning and premises of the doctrine of academic freedom of the teacher and research scholar, lehrfreiheit, as it so developed in the United States.

On 19 January 1976, the Government of Israel announced its intention to impose censorship on two categories of information:

(1) Information about the existence or content of a document relating to Israel's foreign affairs which is classified “top secret” or similarly classified and which is addressed from Israel to a foreign country or from a foreign country to Israel.

(2) Information relating to a visit by an Israeli official to a foreign country or a visit by a foreign official to Israel, or a meeting between an Israeli and a foreign official—when no diplomatic relations obtain between Israel and that country and when the visit or meeting was not conducted in public nor officially announced in Israel.

This step was the Government's response to a series of leakages which appeared in the preceding weeks in the press in Israel. Two publicized items had particularly outraged the Government. One item discussed President Ford's secret message to Prime Minister Rabin. The other item disclosed a secret visit by Foreign Minister Allon to Europe.

From the late 19th century on, a series of social and economic changes have altered the system of labour relations. The transition of bargaining over terms of employment, from the individual to the collective sphere, was the culmination of the historical stages of development. Changes in labour relations have always been, and remain dynamic. Therefore, collective labour law, like the industrial relations system itself, is constantly taking new steps to formulate up-to-date patterns of thought and behaviour. Hence, the legal system finds it difficult to dictate firm policies, and can only try to catch up with the development by post factum legislation and theorization, which can set but a broad and flexible framework.

The collective agreement is presented in this study as a universal phenomenon, resulting from the historical stages of development in labour relations. These stages have led to the crystallization of the collective agreement as it is known today, and to the formulation of its distinctive traits.

The Israeli income tax system has been criticized as one of the main causes of the shortcomings of Israeli society. Moral decadence, corruption, disregard for truth, the drive towards materialism, the decline of long-established values, acquiescence in injustice and the widening of the gap between the “haves” and the “have nots”—to name but a few—have been ascribed to it. Rarely has a tax system as such, been credited with the ability to contribute so little good. Admittedly, the tax system became an easy scapegoat to blame for the weaknesses of Israeli society. More than the tax system has gone wrong; the very fibre of Israeli society has come under a strain for which Israelis were ill-prepared. It would therefore be more accurate to describe the Israeli tax scene during the past few years as one of the symptoms of the malady, but not as the sickness itself.

The Faculty of Law of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Israel Law Review wish to honour the memory of a brilliant young Jewish scholar who was killed in action while fighting for France in the First World War.

Jean Juster born in 1881 at Piatra-Neamtz, in Rumania (Moldavia), was of a family well-known in the region. His grandfather, Abraham Lipa Juster, one of the leaders of the Jewish community, was erudite and active in public affairs. His father, Moshe, was also learned in Jewish studies and active in the promotion of the well-being of the community.

Jean probably received his Jewish education at Piatra. In that town, which N. Sokolow called “the Moldavian Jerusalem”, a branch of the Hovevei Zion movement was created in 1894 and from 1897 groups of supporters of Zionism were active.

Dean Acheson frankly reconfirmed the right of self-preservation, when he asserted, “…law simply does not deal with … questions of ultimate power—power that comes close to the sources of sovereignty…. No law can destroy the state creating the law. The survival of states is not a matter of law”. It is beyond the law.

Given the existence of man's elementary loyalty to autonomous states, the necessity for using force springs from the need of states to depend fundamentally on self-help in order to guarantee their survival and welfare. This search for security in a system of politics without government, forces the state to be dependent upon military self-help.

In every system of law there exist formalized rules of evidence, according to which facts have to be proven.

A party in court may be required by his opponent to prove all the facts on which he desires to rely.

Yet there must be a limit to the legal uncertainty of an endless chain of facts for which, otherwise, an equally endless chain of proofs might be demanded.

Judges have a proper and powerful way to prevent superfluous debates as to the existence of what they deem to be generally known, or to have been already sufficiently established in a number of previous cases. Such facts can be declared to have become “public”, “judicial” or “common knowledge”.

A fact so declared may, actually, be of a very complicated nature, such as a generally accepted scientific theory. The danger is, that no scientific theory is completely static, and widely accepted theories may, with justification be undermined by newer and more refined insights, but it usually takes some time until the new—and perhaps better—theory becomes generally accepted.

For that reason, theories which are in a flux, or are being competently questioned, cannot be easily declared to have been solved one way or the other. Predilection towards a particularly emphasized conception to such extent as to declare that conception not merely preferred, but “public knowledge” may foreclose for a considerable time the prevalence of better conceptions.

The right of the citizen to express his views publicly is a basic feature of the democratic system. However, the freedom of expression, and the closely related freedom of public assembly, do at times conflict with other major social interests. As a result, no society has accepted the theory that these freedoms should be absolute. The democratic process requires a balancing of these freedoms with other important values and public interests. Consequently, each state has placed various limitations on the freedom of expression and public assembly. If a government limits these freedoms too much, it may do irreparable damage to the democratic process. Likewise, the fact that the freedom is enshrined in some constitutional document does not ensure that it will be given any meaningful protection. Whether or not fundamental freedoms are really preserved, is the true test of a democracy.

Demonstrations have traditionally been used as a vehicle for expressing dissent. A citizen who is generally satisfied with the social and political status quo will probably not feel a need to exhibit his satisfaction publicly.

Great efforts have been made during the last decade to combat all forms of racial discrimination and anti-semitism, by legislation as well as on the social plain. On an international level, special conventions have been adopted, and some countries such as the United States, Great Britain, and Austria have, in addition, adopted special provisions to deal with their own specific problems. The growing number of foreigners who now come to work (Arabs, Africans, Portuguese, Italians, Greeks, Turks etc.) in Western Europe, have aggravated the ever present tradition of racism and anti-semitism, and have produced new forms of racial discrimination. In 1972, France widened the legislation which had been initiated in 1939. A number of cases have already been decided by French courts applying the 1972 law and in this article we will discuss its practical application.

We know nothing of the local organization of the Jews in the Visigothic kingdom. It seems likely that their communities (called conventus in the statutes) preserved the same framework as they had had under the Roman rule. Recognized by law as long as the Jewish cult was licit, the Jewish communities were to be deprived of their legal existence by those kings who compelled the Jewish to baptism.

Thus we have no information about their internal organization during either the Arian or Catholic regimes, save for some fragmentary data which have reached us concerning two Jewish communal institutions.

Arian Period: The first Visigothic king who took notice of the Jews was, according to our records, Alaric II (484–507).

In his Breviarium published in 506, to which should be added Paul's Sententiae, he substantially adopted the laws in force in the Roman Empire at the time of the Visigothic conquest.

The Arian successors of Alaric, for all their wide legislative activity, do not seem to have introduced any changes relating to the Jews.

While contemporary Jews debate “Who is a Jew?”, medievals found the question “Who is not a Jew?” much more relevant. Halakhic standards were clear enough on entrance to the community: birth or conversion decided the matter, and the latter provided no more problems than did the average halakhic norm. The institution of conversion was not quite as old as that of birth, but it too had a respectable history of Talmudic discussion and stable international precedent behind it by the start of medieval times, and no Jewry found itself in a quandary on that score. This was not the case regarding Jews who rejected Judaism and left the community. Talmudic discussion is both sparse and incomplete on this issue; and it may not necessarily suit the case of the medieval apostate who exchanges his native fold for an equally possessive faith community. The medievals faced the problem, then, with some Talmudic guidelines but with many open options; yet despite the different opinions that developed, we are able to speak of a medieval concensus. This concensus delivered a legal standard, to be sure; but, as we might expect from an issue of such scope and centrality, the legal concensus was based on a broad understanding of the relation of the Jew to his people and the nature of Jewish peoplehood.

The few privileges strictly necessary for observing the Jewish rites, privileges which the last Roman Emperors had allowed to be maintained, were naturally upheld by those Visigothic kings who did not propose to abolish Judaism altogether, that is to say, by all the Arian and some of the Catholic kings. But all Jewish ceremonies were proscribed under severe penalties by those kings who compelled the Jews to opt between either baptism or exile. Under the system established by the first converting kings, any Jew who refused to undergo baptism was liable to serious punishment. For him the question of observing Jewish rites simply did not arise. As for the baptized Jew who observed these rites, he incurred the rigours of the laws directed against Christians who practised Judaism.

Abandoning that system, Recesswinth refrained from imposing upon the the Jews the alternative of either accepting baptism or exile, but he prohibited the exercise of their religious rites. The penalties were the same for anyone transgressing that prohibition, be he a Jew or a baptized Jew—the death penalty by fire or stoning, or, if pardoned by the king, enslavement for life and forfeiture of all the offender's property.