Ever since the principle of self-determination entered the lexicon of international politics during World War I, American foreign policymakers have had to contend with problems revolving around that concept. The need to favor one or another claimant, each waving the banner of self-determination and invoking the “right to determine its own fate,” continues to present dilemmas, often extremely troubling ones, for U.S. decisionmakers. Examples from recent history come readily to mind. The entire post-World War II decolonization process entailed an endless series of such dilemmas, and even after formal decolonization was all but completed, such nagging issues as Katanga, Biafra, and Eritrea remained, not to mention the problems of South Africa, Northern Ireland, the Middle East, and Indochina. Indeed, even within America’s own imperial domain, the United States was faced with the conflicting demands of the Puerto Rican nationalists and the majority of the Puerto Rican electorate, the claims of the Marianas as against those of Micronesia as a whole, and demands for cultural autonomy on the part of diverse ethnic groups.

In the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence the nascent United States acknowledged “a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind.” This constituted, to a certain extent, an express acceptance of the binding force of international law, a corpus of rules based upon generally prevalent opinio juris.

In an international legal order dominated by states, the individual citizen is generally viewed as lacking international legal personality. It is true with little exception that an individual cannot appear in an international forum, political or judicial, to press his rights. Despite the dramatically increased emphasis upon international protection of basic human rights, individuals have been given access to international dispute-settlement machinery in only a few isolated instances within the United Nations system, and on a regional level pursuant to the European Convention on Human Rights.1

The Secretary-General of the United Nations has recently referred to the goal of building up an international staff of the highest standard of efficiency, competence, and integrity, responsible only to the Organization and with as wide a geographical basis as possible. He acknowledged that the fact that the United Nations is a predominantly political organization inevitably exposes the Secretariat to pressures from many quarters although “Governments have generally made great efforts to respect the terms of Article 100, paragraph 2, of the Charter.…” He expressed the belief that it has been widely recognized that an objective independent Secretariat is in the long run in the best interest of all member states.

The deprivations with which we are here concerned are those imposed upon individuals on the ground that they do not possess the “nationality” of the imposing state. By nationality we refer to the “characterizations” states make of individuals for the purpose of controlling and protecting them for the many comprehensive concerns of states. Since the larger transnational community honors states in the conferment and withdrawal of “nationality” upon many different grounds—including place of birth, blood relation, subjective identification of individuals, and various activities—these characterizations may bear little relation to the actual facts of particular community membership and, hence, to reasonable differentiations in terms of common interest in the larger community of mankind. It is our thesis that most deprivations imposed through these characterizations are made unlawful, not merely by the historic law of the responsibility of states, but also by a newly emerged general norm of nondiscrimination which seeks to forbid all generic differentiations among people in access to value shaping and sharing for reasons irrelevant to individual capabilities and contribution.

The deliberative process by which the International Court of Justice (ICJ) reaches its decisions, although a matter of public record,1 is largely ignored today even by specialists.2 Several reasons account for this situation: the limited availability and somewhat opaque nature of the Court’s published procedures;3 the lack of practical interest in this aspect of the Court’s task;4 the reluctance of judges in the past to discuss, at least in print, any aspect of the Court’s decisionmaking process;5 and the impression held in some quarters that this process is something of a mystery.6 Consequently, few students of the Court have more than a hazy impression of how it makes its decisions.7

The Western—or, until now, Spanish—Sahara is a small place. Its decolonization and the fortunes of its mere 75,000 inhabitants do not attract instant or prolonged public attention. Nevertheless, or, perhaps, in part for that very reason, the disposition of the Sahara case by the United Nations has been monumentally mishandled, creating a precedent with a potential for future mischief out of all proportion to the importance of the territory.

On August 1, 1975 the Chiefs of State and other high representatives of 33 European countries, the United States, and Canada signed the Final Act of The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) in Helsinki. This event, described as the largest meeting of European leaders since the Congress of Vienna or by the more enthusiastic as the largest such meeting in history, had been little discussed in the North American press and caught the American public largely unprepared. Logic dictated that such an impressive gathering had to have an equally impressive purpose, and editorial writers struggled to explain the significance of the occasion. The general conclusion was that the President had demeaned himself by recognizing Soviet postwar hegemony in Eastern Europe without any substantial quid pro quo. George Ball called it “a defeat for the West.” Much of this comment in the media was without benefit of the complex document actually signed at Helsinki, covering sixty printed pages, which was made available to the public only one week prior to the signing. The Department of State, concerned that euphoria over this event might lead to increased pressure for withdrawal of U.S. forces from Europe and for other forms of unilateral disarmament, played down the Conference as an exercsie which was primarily of interest to the allies of the United States and which in any case had not produced documents of a legally binding character. For those determined to oppose the Conference, this appeared to be some form of coverup, whereas to those who saw merit in the texts, this seemed to depreciate the usefulness of some important steps in the right direction. Confusion over a document as carefully drawn, as vague and full of interrelationships and loopholes as is the Final Act is natural, and the results of the Conference should provide many a scholar a rich harvest of material for study for years to come.

A comprehensive amendment to the constitutional instrument of the International Monetary Fund has been submitted to the 128 member states of that organization for their acceptance in order that it may enter into force. The “Proposed Second Amendment” to the Articles of Agreement of the International Monetary Fund was approved by the IMF’s Board of Governors on April 30, 1976. In the United States and many other countries the amendment will, in accordance with internal law, be submitted to appropriate legislative bodies for consent to acceptance.

The United States and some other members of the United Nations have been concerned in recent years about the substance of some resolutions of the General Assembly and the procedures by which they were adopted. Their concern was intensified by certain actions at the twenty-ninth session, when the Assembly sustained a ruling of its President with respect to the representation and participation of South Africa in that and future sessions, when it curbed the right of Israel to participate in the debate on the question of Palestine, when it accorded to the representative of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) a treatment usually reserved to the head of a member state, and when it declared by Resolution 3210 (XXIX) of October 14, 1974, “that the Palestinian people is the principal party to the question of Palestine” and invited the PLO “to participate in the deliberations of the General Assembly on the question of Palestine in plenary meetings.”

The Geneva Diplomatic Conference on the Reaffirmation and Development of International Humanitarian Law in Armed Conflicts continues its attempts to supplement the 1949 Geneva Conventions, and in so doing to make the bulk of jus in bello consonant with factual reality. The first session of the Conference in 1974 provisionally adopted one highly important article out of 137 presented to the Conference by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The second session in 1975 provisionally adopted 77 articles pertaining to such important subjects as the definition of a noninternational armed conflict, the protection of civilians and civilian goods, medical transport, environmental protection, and protection of journalists.

It can be said today that a unilateral most-favored-nation (MFN) clause is only of historical significance. The first unilateral MFN clauses appeared in the seventeenth century in the capitulation treaties with the Ottoman Empire and in the agreements between the French East India Company and the Mogul Empire. However, it was in the latter half of the nineteenth century that unilateral MFN clauses were most extensively concluded between the European Powers and Asian countries. These unilateral clauses served as an instrument for securing “equality in exploitation” in the economically backward regions of Asia where several of the capital exporting countries were in competition and conflict with each other.

In the commentary on their monumental collection of lump sum compensation treaties, Lillich and Weston regret the lack of information concerning the negotiation of these agreements as well as the lack of relevant information concerning the distribution of the lump sums received. The present article endeavors to remedy this lack of information at least in regard to the Austrian practice that has come to the attention of the author.

The United Nations Conference on the Representation of States in their Relations with International Organizations, held in Vienna from February 4 to March 14, 1975, adopted by a vote of 57 in favor to one against, with fifteen abstentions, a new international convention governing the status and functions of missions and delegations of states to international organizations and conferences.

The commercial contacts of foreign governments and their agencies with the American economy are steadily growing in number and importance. In addition to the numerous foreign government-owned airlines and shipping concerns doing business in the United States, foreign government ownership of, or participation in, industrial, banking, and trading corporations doing business here is substantial. Furthermore, in more and more instances U.S. petroleum and other imports are purchased from foreign governmental entities whose contacts with the United States will probably become more extensive. Foreign governments, directly or through purchasing entities, are making huge annual purchases of American agricultural exports. The U.S. capital market continues to handle substantial volumes of borrowing by foreign governments and their instrumentalities.

The new Greek Constitution which entered into force on June 11, 1975, offers to international lawyers an illustration of the increasing importance given to international legal issues by politicians and constitutional experts as they attempt to fashion constitutional structures more in keeping with contemporary international realities. The provisions of the new Constitution concerning international law and relations which are discussed here are largely consistent with current constitutional trends in Western Europe. They, and the debate around them, may also yield useful insights into the role and importance of the international legal context for a small country actively involved in and influenced by world affairs. They are thus of interest not only to those who follow political events in Greece but to a wider public concerned with democracy and internationalism.

The purpose of this article is to examine the main legal questions that arise from the co-existence of two sets of international procedures for handling individual petitions: the system established by the Optional Protocol to the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, on the one hand, and two regional procedures within the framework of the Organization of American States, on the other.