The Constitutional and international history of Singapore and Malaya have been chequered and hectic since the days of the Japanese occupation. Perhaps the most startling were the years from 1963 to 1965, the period during which Singapore ceased being a Crown Colony to form with Malaya the Federation of Malaysia and, when that experiment failed, to become an independent sovereign state within the Commonwealth.

It is the purpose of this paper to examine this history in order to extract those issues which are of interest from the point of view of state succession and the continuity of law, while at the same time paying attention to some of the problems of competence that occur in a federal state, especially one in which the component parts have only recently enjoyed independence.

The executive directors of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), having formulated a Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes between States and Nationals of Other States, approved on March 18, 1965 the submission of the text of the Convention to member governments of the Bank. This action represents a milestone in the efforts of several international organizations to achieve some sort of harmony in an area of international economic development where there has been manifest disunity. The arbitration of private investment disputes has strong legal and political undertones, for it is set against a background of friction between capital-exporting countries that always seek to protect the interests of their nationals abroad, and capital-importing countries that normally recognize a need for foreign private capital to bolster their economic development, yet are wary of allowing external mechanisms to encroach on their sovereign jurisdiction within their own territory.

One of the principal achievements of the United Nations is its work in codifying and developing international law. The International Law Commission, created in 1949, a subsidiary organ of the General Assembly, is the chief agency of the United Nations for achieving these tasks. The Chairman of the Commission at its sixteenth session, Professor Roberto Ago of Italy, stated in the Commission on July 16, 1964, that if the codification work which was now taking place in that body could be completed and accepted by states, progress would have been made without precedent since the time of Grotius.

So well-established has the International Law Commission become on the international scene that it is almost surprising to recall that the existence of this body rests, not on any specific wording of the United Nations Charter calling for the creation of such a body of experts, but on the general phraseology of Article 13 of the Charter which provides that “the General Assembly shall initiate studies and make recommendations for the purpose of: (a) promoting … and encouraging the progressive development of international law and its codification.” In the space of seventeen years the International Law Commission has achieved widespread recognition for the high quality of its work; it would be no exaggeration to say that it has come to be regarded as rivaling in importance the work of the International Court of Justice. As “the principal judicial organ of the United Nations,” as successor to the Permanent Court of Justice — a new feature of international institutions in the modern era — and as the highest international judicial tribunal, the International Court of Justice is regarded, in the general scheme of the Charter, as an exceptionally prestigious body.

The powers of the General Assembly and Security Council of the United Nations to take collective measures for the maintenance of international peace and security, particularly to maintain armed forces for that purpose, and the power of the General Assembly to finance these activities were much discussed during the recent crisis in the Organization when certain members refused to contribute to the support of the UNEF and Congo Operation. Various aspects of the matter have been discussed by writers; they have also been dealt with by the International Court of Justice in its Advisory Opinion of June 1962 where it held that the UNEF and Congo Operation undertaken by the General Assembly and Security Council were intra vires the powers of these organs and that the expenses incurred by the Organization in the execution of those ventures were “expenses of the Organization” for the purposes of Article 17 (2) of the Charter. The Court and some of the judges who gave separate opinions further made a definite contribution to the interpretation of certain aspects of the Charter in the course of arriving at these conclusions.

How complete is the United Nations Treaty Series (UNTS)? What does an answer to this question mean for our understanding of the law of treaties? If the UNTS is not complete, which treaties are missing? If there are gaps, do they show any patterns? Are some signatories, treaty topics or time periods more gap-prone than others? If we take Canada as a test case, for example, do all post-1945 treaties of Canada actually show up in the UNTS? If there is a gap, can we identify it? If identified, can the gap be explained? How does Canada compare with other countries in UNTS fidelity? Finally, and most importantly, what does the Canadian test case mean for the UNTS as a whole and for the law of treaties?

These questions have come up repeatedly in connection with the UNTS Project at the University of Washington since 1963. There is no comprehensive answer for all of them, but many new details have been found and some patterns have emerged.

The regulation of international price discrimination, commonly referred to as “dumping,” has been one of the most vexing technical problems to trouble international trade in this century. A favourite weapon of a firm or cartel bent on coercing or eliminating competition has been the price war — sales at below cost for the purpose of driving competitors into line or out of the market. This type of unfair trade practice is not limited by national boundaries, but the normal techniques of controlling it, through antitrust or anti-combines legislation, are largely confined to domestic economies as national governments lack authority to regulate competitors operating exclusively in foreign jurisdictions.

Canadian manufacturers have been particularly sensitive to dumping because of the presence next door of large and powerful American competitors and of the close economic proximity of the industries of Britain and continental Europe. Consequently, it is not surprising that Canada pioneered in the field of legislation against dumping, enacting the original provisions in 1904. At that time the government was under considerable pressure from Canadian industry to increase tariffs generally and the introduction of anti-dumping legislation was designed to pacify this group without resorting to an overall increase in customs duties.

The search for some means to terminate the Vietnam conflict by negotiation has given rise to certain anomalies in the application of the law and procedure of the United Nations and of the existing regional arrangements affecting Southeast Asia. It has also revealed the existence of a lacuna in the provisions of these international instruments governing the discharge of peacekeeping functions. This, however, is not the case in respect of the International Commission for Supervision and Control in Vietnam which constitutes the only tangible instrument of the Geneva settlement specifically created to fulfil, on a continuous basis, the tasks of control, observation, inspection, and investigation connected with the application of the Cease-fire Agreement for Vietnam.

From whatever standpoint it may be viewed, the decision of President Johnson to order the Marines into the Dominican Republic on April 28, 1965, was bound to provide a focus for controversy. However, the essentially political nature of that act and its ostensible and concealed motivations have tended to shroud the impact of the Dominican crisis upon the legal mechanisms of the Inter-American System, outlined in the basic documents and developed in the practice of the Organization of American States. This is not to suggest that the problems of Latin America in general and of the Dominion Republic in particular are reducible to a statement of principles of international law. Indeed, it is the present writer’s contention that the Latin American members of the Organization have demonstrated that they are far too servile towards what they deem to be the basic norms of American international law, and that this attitude coupled with the equivocal political manœuvres of the United States has produced a form of institutional schizophrenia which deflects attention from the basic problems of contemporary Latin America and the pressing need for their solution. The main purposes of this comment are to examine the Dominican crisis in the context of fundamental stresses in Latin American society, to evaluate the roles of the United States and the O.A.S. in terms of their reactions to this case, and to make some general comments on how the Inter-American System may be rendered more meaningful in dealing with the political, economic, and social priorities of the region.

The United States notice of denunciation of the Warsaw Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules relating to International Carriage by Air, opened for signature at Warsaw on October 12, 1929, even though now withdrawn, marks the end of an era in the development of private international air law. The notice of denunciation was communicated to the Polish government, depositary of the Convention, on November 15, 1965, because, according to the United States of America, the present limit of liability — which amounts approximately to $8,300 U.S. — applicable in the case of death of, or injury to, a passenger in international carriage was considered to be no longer adequate to protect United States citizens of practically all economic levels who in ever-increasing numbers are making use of international air transport. On May 13, 1966, just two days before the denunciation was to take effect, the United States dramatically withdrew its notice after a series of eleventh-hour discussions and consultations culminating in an agreement by thirty-four airlines to accept a limit of liability of $75,000 U.S. per passenger and, with the exception of three American airlines, to accept also the absolute liability of the air carrier. The notice of denunciation of what has often been described as one of the most widely accepted conventions of its kind sent a wave of uneasiness through the world of international civil aviation. As a result of that notice, the Warsaw system came under searching examination and, in view of the agreement mentioned above, will, no doubt, be substantially modified when, in due course, a diplomatic conference is convened to amend the Convention.

All law," as Professor Gregory Tunkin, the former Principal Legal Adviser to the Soviet Foreign Ministry, has remarked, "is a species of coexistence." I take it that Dr. Tunkin means by that that legal norms, if they are to be really meaningful as law-in-action in any community, must proceed on a basis of the reconciliation of the competing claims advanced by the main social interestgroups in that community. The international law of the era of the Soviet-Western détente, that hopefully has succeeded to the erstwhile Cold War conflicts, is based on just such a species of intersystems accommodations and compromises, highlighted of course by the Moscow Test Ban Treaty of August 1963 but represented also in a series of lesser agreements and adjustments of fundamental interests-conflicts. The essence of international law-making under these circumstances, if it is to yield a viable system of norms that actually will operate as law-in-action in the contemporary World Community, becomes one of looking for genuine mutuality and reciprocity of interest as between the main political-ideological groupings in the World Community.