No branch of international law has been so badly misunderstood and needlessly confused as that of the recognition of new states and new governments. Recognition has been the football of diplomats who have made it mean anything that suited their purpose. It has certainly been grossly abused as a weapon of diplomatic pressure and intervention. It has in many cases proved to be an insoluble puzzle to the courts whose decisions have been sometimes conflicting and confusing. It has been a plaything for the political scientists who have taken delight in posing abstract problems of a theoretical nature.

During the five years that have elapsed since the close of hostilities in World War II, approximately one-half of the nations of the world have adopted new constitutions or have drastically revised existing ones. While some constitutions have been the products of a more or less regular modification, others have marked a revolutionary, though peaceful, development in conformity with Western political traditions. Some have followed the re-emergence of nations in defeat, and others have signalized the birth of new members of the family of nations. Finally, the régimes of the “People’s Democracy” have established instruments of government which are revolutionary both in their origin and their content.

On September 28, 1945, the President of the United States issued two proclamations asserting jurisdiction and control for certain purposes over areas of the high seas. These proclamations suggested the introduction of a new element into United States policy with regard to high seas jurisdiction even though the press release of September 28, 1945, which accompanied the proclamations, indicated that they did not purport to “extend the present limits of the territorial waters of the United States.”

In his note on “The Venezuela-British Guiana Boundary Dispute,” (this JOURNAL, Vol. 43 (1949), pp. 523–530), Judge Otto Schoenrich publishes a memorandum by the late Severo Mallet-Prevost which, if it were the only evidence upon which the fairness of the arbitration of 1899 could be judged, would bring the justice of the award seriously into question. Fortunately, however, it is not necessary to rely either upon the recollections of Mr. Mallet-Prevost or upon the construction placed upon these and other facts relating to the boundary dispute by Judge Schoenrich in order to learn the truth of how the Tribunal came to make its award. There are the voluminous files of the British Foreign Office on the arbitration to which reference may be made and there is the verbatim record of the Tribunal, taken down by six shorthand writers, printed day by day as the Tribunal sat, and then issued in 54 parts. There are also the files —often most informative—of contemporary newspapers (for the arbitration took place at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs under the watchful eye of the press).

It is believed that certain background information will facilitate an understanding of the decision of July 5, 1951, by the International Court of Justice regarding interim measures of protection in the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company Case, reprintedinfra, page 789. The dispute between the United Kingdom and Iran grows out of the unilateral termination by the Iranian Government, as a part of its oil nationalization program, of a concession contract which entered into force May 29, 1933, between the Government of Iran and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, a British corporationin which the British Government holds a large share of the stock.