On January 11, 1957, the United States rejected a request of the Government of Switzerland to submit the Interhandel controversy to arbitration or conciliation in conformity with the provisions of the United States-Swiss Treaty of Arbitration and Conciliation of February 16, 1931. The refusal to submit the controversy to arbitration was declared to be “on the ground that the matter does not involve a dispute falling within the scope of the obligation to have recourse to arbitration” and the refusal to comply with the conciliation provisions of the treaty was on the ground that they “would necessarily be unproductive.”

The military interventions initiated by Israel, the United Kingdom, and France in Egypt and by the Soviet Union in Hungary, during October and November, 1956, have different historical backgrounds and different political purposes. They may have been politically connected with one another, and in any case they were connected by the fact that they occurred at the same time and were all dealt with by the United Nations. It is the purpose of this article to examine the legal justification for these interventions with only the minimum historical background necessary for that purpose. The criteria for aggression which the writer developed in the July, 1956, number of this Journal will be assumed and for their justification the reader is referred to that article.

During the year 1956, the International Court of Justice gave two Advisory Opinions to assist in the work of the United Nations. On June 1, 1956, it met a request from the General Assembly for an opinion on the Admissibility of Hearings of Petitioners by the Committee on South West Africa. On October 23, 1956, it responded to a request from the Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization of the United Nations by giving an opinion on the Judgments of the Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organisation upon Complaints Made Against the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. It also gave a series of orders, some of which denied the jurisdiction of the Court.

One of the most representative authors of modern analytical philosophy, T. D. Weldon, has pointed out recently how he and his English and American colleagues have come to realize that many of the problems which their predecessors found insuperable arise not from something mysterious or inexplicable in the world around them, but from the peculiarities of the language with which we try to describe the world itself. This Oxford philosopher remarks that many errors in political doctrine and in various branches of philosophy are caused by “carelessness over the implications of language.” This carelessness, he goes on to say, is often due to the mistaken idea that words, and especially the words that normally recur in discussions on matters of political doctrine, have an intrinsic and essential meaning of their own, more or less in the same way as children have parents.

The purported nationalization of the Universal Company of the Suez Maritime Canal by the Egyptian Decree of July 26, 1956, refreshed the interest of the international community in the long-lingering dispute over restrictions imposed by Egypt on the passage of cargoes bound for Israeli ports and the prohibition of the passage of Israeli ships through the Suez Canal.

The impact of the nationalization by the Egyptian Government on July 26, 1956, of the Suez Canal Company (Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez) upon international affairs is still reverberating. The questions of international law and other problems to which it gives rise are manifold, but this article will be restricted to an examination of four of them: first, the international and legal status of the Suez Canal Company; second, the nature and legal status of concession agreements which are referred to in the text of the Convention of October 29, 1888; third, the international status and control of the Suez Canal, particularly under the 1888 Convention; and fourth, the matter of compensation.

The organized pressures for return of vested enemy assets are accumulating. Acting in rhythm with “that cyclical movement of policy toward an enemy which history has made familiar, German interests directing their primary efforts toward the United States have received a sympathetic hearing from the Administration, and the Senate Committee on the Judiciary has approved proposed legislation which, if adopted, would reopen and nullify commitments to our Allies following World War II.

Among students of international law it is no secret that the concrete determination and formulation of the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations is a task hardly begun. This paper is intended to show that the task is important, perhaps more important than any other to which the collective wisdom and experience of scholars trained in comparative law can be devoted, and that the colossal magnitude of the task should not discourage us from making a beginning. It further aims to call attention to a specific project now under way which is designed to constitute a systematic beginning, or at least to determine the feasibility of the attempt.

No international institution of general scope can continue its normal functioning in a period of a great world upheaval, and any international institution for the preservation of law and order must find its activities circumscribed at such a time. The Permanent Court of International Justice was no exception to the rule.

The purpose of this paper is to test further a theory of international law, developed elsewhere in outline and primarily based on the evidence of the work of international judicial institutions and Anglo-American state practice. The main thesis is that, on the level of unorganized international society, international law can be presented in terms of a system of interrelated legal rules from which seven fundamental principles of international law can be abstracted.

Concomitant with the stationing of United States armed forces in friendly foreign countries is an increasing concern over, and appreciation of, the legal issues arising from their presence. The most controversial question concerns exercise by the host state of criminal jurisdiction over personnel of the visiting United States force. The House Foreign Affairs Committee after extensive hearings refused to accede to critics’ demands that this exercise of criminal jurisdiction by foreign countries be officially denounced, and by a vote of 19–10 tabled the condemnatory resolutions.1 Congressional concern remains strong, however, and the issue is not dormant.

The Soviet Union, since its inception in 1917, has been the world’s largest source of refugees and displaced persons. This in itself would be sufficient motive to examine the Soviet attitude towards this category of individuals, but apart from mere quantity, the question is of interest, too, for other reasons: Russian refugees were the cause and the first subjects of international legal attempts to solve the problem; Soviet policies toward them have been unusual at all times, resulting in some bold innovations in international law; and most refugees and displaced persons at present come from behind the Iron Curtain, thereby involving the Soviet Union and its satellites, whose policies are influenced by and modeled on the Soviet experience.

All writers commencing with Grotius say that the names of instruments embraced in the genus treaty have little, if any, legal significance. All who mention the matter say that some instruments are more important in international relations than others, and that “treaty” or “convention” is at the top of the list of some three dozen words that are used to describe such instruments. All agree that treaties generically have the characteristic of legally recording what the parties have agreed to, and, beyond that, all hedge on completing a definition. Few writers attempt to draw a line between treaties and legal obligations that are not treaties. In one way or another writers are accustomed to say that names are assigned to treaties idiosyncratically, at the whim of the draftsmen or by chance.

There are no established definitions in law for describing the upper regions of the atmosphere or the space beyond the atmosphere. The legal dictionaries and the law encyclopedias do not even refer to the stratosphere or the areas above.