Like any legal system, international law assigns a place to responsibility. The very recognition of the existence of international law implies the principle of responsibility for the violation of the international legal duties imposed on the State. As formulated by Max Huber, the first president of the Permanent Court of International Justice: “La responsabilité est le corollaire nécessaire du droit. Tous droits d'ordre international ont pour conséquence une responsabilité internationale.” Ch. de Visscher regards the international responsibility of States as a logical consequence of their equality in the international legal system. The mutual recognition of their sovereignty implies on the one hand the freedom of action essential to the accomplishment of their objectives, while on the other hand it imposes upon them the restrictions necessarily ensuing from the existence of different States that have equal rights. “Une fois reconnu par la communauté Internationale, l'Etat … apparait comme capable d'enfreindre le droit international et d'assumer de ce chef des responsabilités.”

The study of the disparity in wealth and growth between the nations must have absolute priority. Economic themes and strategies seem to aim at stimulating the economic growth of the third world, but doubts are arising now, because of the risks inherent to excessive economic growth and accompanying recession or overheating. The very fact that the equalization movement has become an object of strategy creates passions and movements that imperil the cause of justice, and the very functioning of international law. Some doctrinal voices are heard that incriminate existing international law as being opposed to development as such, and plead for a complete review. This essay intends to analyse this crisis, to point out certain positive aspects, but also to defend international law against unjust accusations.

Hijacking is a serious crime and has to be considered as such. We may agree with a resolution of the XIth congress of the International Association of Penal Law, Budapest, autumn 1974, which states:

“In its most frequent manifestations the unlawful seizure of aircraft is nothing but a form of terrorism.”

The case study that follows appears to demonstrate the commonly-noted features of international law: a decentralized and imperfect legal system, one lacking real functional and jural equivalents to the institutions found in domestic law, and one with the dédoublement fonctionnel problem. Illustrated another way, the problem is that during major disputes or crises political considerations tend to be primary while legal ones are secondary. This appears to have been particularly true in the relations between the superpowers during the cold War.

1. Domicile is “… l'une des notions les plus fuyantes et les plus insaississables de nos systemes juridiques”. Are these words of Lagarde applicable to the notion of domicile as a connecting factor in the Netherlands conflict of laws? The present article sets out to cast some light upon this question. After a survey of the manifestations of domicile, usually referred to in Netherlands private international law as woonplaats or domicilie, as a connecting factor, attention will be paid to the hypothetical usefulness in private international law of the Netherlands Civil Code provisions devoted to woonplaats. Subsequently Netherlands judicial decisions will be reviewed in order to find out which elements – if any – are ascribed by Netherlands courts to the concept of domicile. As a result of this investigation a few distinctions into categories of cases will be made, giving rise to the question whether the meaning of domicile in private international law differs according to the legal question(s) it is intended to serve.

If one looks back over the two hundred years of thinking and practice on the codification of international law which separate Jeremy Bentham from the new draft convention on State succession, one is struck by the fact that the ideas become less and less ambitious and more and more cautious, pragmatic and technical. It is true that up to the beginning of the present century learned codes with hundreds of articles were still being produced. But even then the Institut de droit international and the International Law Association had already started work on more specialized projects. The first official codification work under the League of Nations similarly concentrated on selected topics, and this was quite apart from the specialized conventions produced by the International Labour Organization. The codification of the law of international conflict had, of course, already been accomplished in The Hague at the turn of the century.

La France avait toutes les raisons d'apparaitre comme un partisan enthousiaste de la convention européenne des droits de l'Homme lorsque M. Robert Schuman, son célèbre Ministre des Affaires Etrangères, signa cette convention à Rome le 4 novembre 1950. N'etait-elle pas saluée comme la mère des Droits de l'Homme depuis la fameuse Déclaration des Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen de 1789? N'inspira-t-elle pas la convention, à travers les travaux de M. René Cassin aux Nations Unies et le rôle tenu dans ses negotiations par M. Pierre-Henri Teitgen? Et par la suite ne tiendra-t-elle pas une certaine place dans les organes européens chargés d'appliquer la convention, avec sa participation au Comité des Ministres, celle, pour un temps, du Sénateur Pernot à la Commission, celle surtout de M. René Cassin à la Cour qu'il eut même à présider?

Et pourtant la France n'a pas tenu toutes les espérances suscitées en 1950. Elle n'a ratifié la convention qu'au bout d'une génération – le 3 mai 1974; à la faveur de l'intérim présidentiel. sous la signature du Président Poher. Et elle ne donnera a cette ratification qu'une portee limitée.

The 1975 Annual Meeting of the Netherlands branch of the International Law Association (Nederlandse Vereniging voor Internationaal Recht), held in Gouda on April 26th, discussed two reports on the contract provisions of the Preliminary Draft EEC Convention on the Law Applicable to Contractual and Non-contractual Obligations, elaborated by a Group of Government Experts of the six original Member States in June, 1972.

May I start by saying what an honour and a pleasure it is to have this opportunity to speak to your distinguished Institute about the work of the International Law Commission and particularly the law of treaties. It equally gives me a sense of-honour and pleasure to share this occasion with my distinghuished colleague, Professor Tammes. Happily, his views and mine do not always coincide so I hope that our introductory speeches will provoke a lively and interesting discussion.

Since 1957 and at an accelerated pace since 1963, an international capital market for bonds, called the Eurobond market or Euro-issue market, has been developing in Western Europe and the United States. It is a market for bearer bonds issued by international organisations, large industrial concerns or their subsidiary finance corporations, States, state enterprises and local authorities. They are placed with an international clientèle: wealthy private persons (oil sheiks among others), banks and institutional investors. The distribution is entrusted to issuing syndicates in which bankers from London, Luxembourg, Frankfurt and Amsterdam, and securities brokers from New York co-operate. The European capital market is a parallel market in addition to the domestic market, and should be distinguished from the traditional international markets of, for instance, London, New York and Zürich. Direct state influence is but little. The bonds are usually expressed in U.S. dollars, D-Marks or units of account, or they may have an option of currency. International loans may also be expressed in Dutch guilders, or in French or Belgian francs. The bonds are often issued by subsidiary finance corporations in Luxembourg, in the Netherlands, in the American state of Delaware or in the Netherlands Antilles, where no withholding taxes are levied on the interest payments. The absence of coupon tax has stimulated the development of the Eurobond market.

In this report I consider the preliminary draft not so much from the point of view of its usefulness to various branches of legal practice, including business life and the courts, but in particular with respect to the tenability of the theoretical standpoints that are implicit in it. It is my view that a seemingly useful body of rules, however precisely formulated and however little room for interpretation it leaves, will prove deficient in practice, in terms for instance of the predictability of the outcome of its application, unless it rests upon a sound – and not a sand – foundation.