The quest for a hierarchy of international human rights continues unabated, despite the impressive challenge raised by Professor Weil to the notion of “relative normativity” of international legal norms. To illustrate: in Tel-Oren v. Libyan Arab Republic, a suit brought under the (First) Judiciary Act of 1789, Judge Harry T. Edwards discussed whether torture, as distinguished from terrorism, “is among the handful of crimes to which the law of nations attributes individual [civil] responsibility.”

In recent years, several courts in the United States have denied requests for pre-award attachments on the ground that such remedies were contrary to the parties’ agreement to arbitrate, and thus to the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (New York Convention or Convention). Despite these decisions, pre-award attachment is an available remedy in certain jurisdictions in the United States. Furthermore, pre-award remedies to secure assets located outside the United States can be obtained through the courts in other countries.

The core principle of modern world order is that aggressive attack is prohibited in international relations and that necessary and proportional force may be used in response to such an attack. This dual principle is embodied in Articles 2(4) and 51 of the United Nations Charter, Articles 21 and 22 of the revised Charter of the Organization of American States (OAS) and virtually every modern normative statement about the use of force in international relations. Indeed, it is the most important principle to emerge in more than two thousand years of human thought about the prevention of war. In the contemporary world of conflicting ideologies and nuclear threat, no task is more important for international lawyers and statesmen than to maintain the integrity of this principle in both its critical—and reciprocal—dimensions: prohibition of aggression and maintenance of the right of effective defense.

The material in this section is arranged according to the system employed in the annual Digest of United States Practice in International Law, published by the Department of State.