The ‘Westphalian’ system existed in a disguised form in Europe before the Thirty Years War. It threw off the disguise in the late sixteenth century and revealed underlying discrete ‘municipal’ legal orders. By the mid-seventeenth century this ‘Westphalian model’ was widely perceived and accepted as a useful basis for political thought.

“The ordinary jus gentium is only a particular law, applicable to a distinct set or family of nations, varying at different times with the change in religion, manners, government, and other institutions, among every class of nations. Hence the international law of the civilized, Christian nations of Europe and America, is one thing; and that which governs the intercourse of the Mohammedan nations of the East with each other, and with Christians, is another and a very different thing. The international law of Christendom began to be fixed about the time of Grotius, when the combined influence of religion, chivalry, the feudal system, and commercial and literary intercourse, had blended together the nations of Europe into one great family. This law does not merely consist of the principles of natural justice applied to the conduct of states considered as moral beings. It may, indeed, have a remote foundation of this sort; but the immediate visible basis on which the public law of Europe, and of the American nations which have sprung from the European stock, has been erected, are the customs, usages, and conventions observed by that portion of the human race in their mutual intercourse”.

The Latin American countries have played a very important and constructive role in the development of the modern law of the sea. They participated actively and positively in the preparation of all the parts of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, that was open for signature in Montego Bay, Jamaica, on 10 December 1982, but their most important contributions are related to two specific areas which happen to be the most innovative parts of the Convention: the new concept of the exclusive economic zone (Part V) and the régime of the sea-bed and ocean floor beyond the limits of national jurisdiction (Part XI). In order to appreciate the importance of these developments, one has to bear in mind that the creation of the exclusive economic zone concept was part of a larger package deal which included the precise determination of the maximum breadth of the territorial sea, the special régime for straits used for international navigation and the special régime for archipelagic States. Likewise the new concepts of the exclusive economic zone and the international area of the sea-bed and ocean floor required a more precise determination of the outer limit of the continental shelf. These innovations thus had a major impact on most if not on all parts of the convention.

The great increase in criminal activity at the international level, propelled, essentially, by the growth of international narcotic trafficking, has motivated an improvement in international legal cooperation.

‘Si les découvreurs et les colonisateurs de l'Aménque méritent une reconnaissance éternelle pour avoir doté l'univers d'un monde nouveau, certes, les hommes qui firent naître ce monde à l'existence internationale et qui par là rétalirent l'équilibre disparu dans l'ancien monde, suivant la phrase de Canning, ont aussi le droit d'être placés au premier rang parmi ceux dont l'oeuvre bienfaisante est destinée à retentir à travers les siécles. Washington, Bolivar, Miranda, Narino, Santander, San Martin, O'Higgins, Hidalgo, Artigas, autant de noms immortels qui resteront attachés, non seulement à 1'histoire des origines des républiques amÉricaines, mais aussi, et à un titre égal, à l'histoire de l'évolution politique de I'humanité vers la justice et vers le droit.’