On the night of Sunday 27—Monday 28 April 1958, the curtain fell on a diplomatic performance on the Geneva scene which had lasted for nine weeks: the Conference on the Law of the Sea. Driving back to the hotel from the Palais des Nations one could not help comparing the result of this Conference held under the aegis of the United Nations with the corresponding section of its predecessor of 1930 at The Hague, organised by the League of Nations, and being struck by two parallels and two differences. The two Conferences had in common that they had both been thoroughly prepared legally, and that it proved impossible to reach any agreement on one of the fundamental questions discussed, viz. the breadth of the territorial sea. But they differed in that, as far as the law of the sea was concerned, the Geneva Conference covered a much wider field than that of The Hague as it dealt not only with the territorial sea but also with the high seas and the continental shelf, and that they drew different conclusions from their failure to reach agreement on the breadth of the territorial sea, because while the Conference of 1930 ended with no convention at all concerning this subject, its successor of 1958 adopted one in spite of the important gaps left. The Conference of 1958 was moreover attended by a much larger number of States.

Hall's statement, widely quoted by writers on State succession, has retained a good deal of its validity. From Grotius to O'Connell, a long series of distinguished publicists have attempted to throw light upon the doctrinal obscurity of the problem. Many of them have displayed remarkable juristic imagination, but have also shown a regrettable lack of precision and discipline. In their justification, however, it must be conceded that the abundant judicial and diplomatic practice on State succession has always been—and still is—contradictory and obscure.

Bij de legenwoordige zware belastingdruk oefent de vrijstelling van belasting over genoten inkomen, aan bepaalde functies op internationaal terrein verbunden, een magische werking uit op hen, die niet op dit voorrecht kunnen aanspraak maken. Met ontstemming nemen zij, die een groot deel van hun zuur verdiende penningen in de grijpgrage handen van de fiscus zien verdwijnen, kennis van het feit, dat de naar hun oordeel toch reeds buitensporig hoge salarissen, op dit gebied betaald, bovendien nog vrij van belasting zijn. Het kornt ons wel nuttig voor in deze tijd, nu het scheppen van nieuwe internationale organen aan de orde van de dag is, aan deze vrijstellingen enkele beschouwingen te wijden.

On 4th October, 1957, a man-made machine forche first time overrode the age old law proclaiming that everything that goes up must come down. Fifteen months later a means was developed of circumventing the earth's attraction. In September, 1959, the moon was reached and on 12th April, 1961, Major Gagarin orbited the Earth in a space capsule. In the short period of four years man's advance in space has been more rapid than the most sanguine forecaster has dared to predict, and it is now realized that a new phase in the history of mankind of exploration and development has begun in some ways comparable to, but vastly exceeding these in scope, the conquest of the sea and the air. Nobody can visualize the impact the conquest of space is going to have on life on this planet, but it becomes clearer every day that a process of change has started more profound and more sweeping than any which has overtaken the world since the foundation of the modern world.

Arbitration is an institution which preceded courts; yet shortly after the appearance of the latter, arbitration assumed the position of the younger (and weaker) brother. In the course of history, this predicament has only been confirmed and aggravated. Courts of justice have become the representatives of the ‘normal’ settlement of disputes, their legitimacy has been beyond doubt Arbitration has been reduced to an exception, the limits and the functioning of which have been firmly been controlled by courts. There have been revolts against this plight, yet there is practically only one area in which such revolts have really been successful. This is in the domain of international trade. Today, it is an uncontested fact that arbitration is the dominant method of settling international trade disputes; and at the same time, international commercial arbitration has become an almost completely self-sufficient institution. While gaining ground and strength, international commercial arbitration has also gained self-confidence. It has been stressed with increasing frequency (and determination) that the self-reliance of international commercial arbitration is a virtue, and that it advances broader common causes. In the opening sentence of his article on court intervention in arbitral proceedings, Delaume stresses: ‘It is generally recognized that, in order to be fully effective, transnational arbitration must be freed from judicial interference.’

La conception très répandue, voire mêrae classique, que Grotius est le père du Droit des Gens, n'a pas empêché la science de ce droit, tout en proclamant que Grotius est à sa base, de s'éloigner singulièrement de lui, et ceci au sujet de matières très importantes. Cette évolution de la science trouve sa contrepartie dans le fait que l'évolution du droit international lui-même semble obliger la science à retourner vers son fondateur.

An examination of the practice of United Nations organs, including the International Court of Justice, discloses no rules requiring a party who invokes an international agreement before any of those organs to show compliance with Article 102. Nor have we found any instance in which an organ has imposed the penalty of Article 102(2) or in which a party has urged it to do so. This is not to say that no United Nations organ has ever been confronted with an agreement that required registration but which had not been registered. A number of the contentious cases before the International Court presented just such a situation. As will appear from the discussion of cases which follows, the instances in which it can be said that the Court gave effect to such unregistered agreements all involved so-called Special Agreements by which, under Article 36 of the Court's Statute, parties may bring their cases before the Court. This raises the questions whether the Court considers such agreements to be outside the scope of Article 102, and if so, why.

The present topic has been extensively addressed by several authors during the 1990s. It has provoked harsh polemics and a passionate debate and still represents an issue of interest for the international lawyers, as no formal and complete answer to the question of the international judicial review has been brought to this day. This article tries to put forward an effective and efficient mechanism allowing the International Court of Justice to review the resolutions adopted by the Security Council in the realm of Chapter VII of the UN Charter. The approach of the subject is favourable to an international judicial review, which would render the intervention of the Council more legitimate, hence more easily accepted by states. The proposed method of judicial review must however ensure both the legitimacy and the efficiency of the political organ and strengthen, not weaken the United Nations' role in the maintenance of international peace and security. That is why the international judicial review mechanism should be carefully defined and should confer upon the international judge a limited power of appreciation. At the same time, the other international courts and tribunals should defer to the International Court on matters concerning the legality of the Security Council's coercive measures by means of a preliminary ruling mechanism.

It is unlikely that anyone would seriously reject the notion that the prohibition on torture has reached the status of a jus cogens norm in international law. On the contrary, the weight of authority in favour of this status is overwhelming. However, the effect in international law of a jus cogens norm, and of the norm which prohibits torture in particular, has yet to be fully worked out. The differences between the majority and minority judgments of the European Court of Human Rights in Al-Adsani v. the United Kingdom are urgent reminders of the uncertainty of litigation in areas of human rights law whose norms are the subject of seemingly overwhelming moral imperatives.

The landmark case of modern international law of economic warfare, Anderson v. N.V. Transandine Handelmaatschappij, dealing with the application of Royal Decree A 1 of May 24, 1940, was once more the subject of judicial consideration, after an interval of more than ten years, in State of the Netherlands v. Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Archimedes. It may briefly be recalled that the Royal Decree A 1 of the government-in-exile vested protective title in the State of the Netherlands to claims capable of being transferred outside the Realm in Europe and belonging to persons domiciled in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, for the purpose of conserving the rights of the former owners. It was this conservatory character of the Decree, as expressly stated in its art. 1(3), that militated against any confiscatory concept which might have prevented its extraterritorial application to assets located in the United States. Indeed, the conservatory character was stressed in all subsequent decisions which held Royal Decree A 1 applicable in the United States.

This article addresses the issue of whether the international criminal tribunals are under an obligation to fund family visits for indigent detainees. It examines the concept of positive obligations and its relation to the detention situation and describes the practice of funding family visits as it has developed at the International Criminal Court. It further analyses relevant developments in the Court's case law. It argues that the Court is indeed obliged to fund family visits. In this regard, the mere recognition of a detainee's right to family visits in the tribunals’ legal frameworks and in international soft-law penological standards can be said to inadequately reflect the particularities of international detention.

Compared to other international dispute settlement bodies, the European Court of Human Rights' case law is relatively rich in situations involving a single injury and multiple contributing states. This contribution examines how the ECtHR decides such cases and explores to what extent its approach corresponds to that of the work of the International Law Commission on the topic of international responsibility. The article critically discusses the substantive criteria and doctrinal foundations employed by the ECtHR for allocating responsibility. It reflects on the adequacy of the doctrines used and examines how they can contribute to the general law on shared responsibility.

In the long-lasting debate about reforming the United Nations, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appeared to want to make a difference. On the basis of a report prepared by a high level panel of experts he presented his own reform proposals in March 2005. At the beginning of 2005 a voluminous report on the development issue, the so-called Millennium Project Report (or ‘Sachs-Report’), was presented. On the basis of these documents an intense discussion set in. Despite the fact that the immediate result of this debate, the so-called 2005 World Summit Outcome of September 2005 was rather disappointing, the world community has now at their disposal an array of detailed studies and reports on some of the most topical issues in international law. As reform of the United Nations seems to be imperative the relative discussion will continue. This article aims at examining the strengths and faults of the documents mentioned and highlighting the extent to which the positions to be found therein are corresponding to the main structural elements of the international order presently in force. Finally, the article also considers whether these proposals are opening suitable avenues for a further development of UN law.