The elaboration of international legal standards relating to the status of women in the Commission on the Status of Women has led to an increased interest within the Commission with the problem of the implementation of these principles for, as Landy states:

“the adoption of international legislation and its formal acceptance by a growing number of countries cannot, by themselves, add to the stability of inter-State relations, unless there also exists some degree of assurance that the contracting parties really comply with their obligations…”

The current litigation in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) over European restrictions on the importation, marketing and sale of genetically modified organisms gives rise to questions about the procedures through which international courts and tribunals may receive expert evidence from social science experts. The WTO Panel considering the EC – Biotech case received an amicus curiae brief from five social science experts who are highly qualified in precisely those fields of sociological research within which the most problematic aspects of the Biotech dispute are situated. The authors of the five-person brief themselves suggest that panels dealing with the subject of risk should contemplate formally appointing experts to assist them from disciplines additional to the natural sciences, and this suggestion merits serious broader consideration. International courts and tribunals’ handling of certain cases, such as those concerning risks to human health and the environment from new and modern technology, may stand to be improved through better access to state-of-the-art expertise on all aspects of risk and risk assessment.

The Liberian conflict was a violent response to the tyranny and misrule of the then President, Samuel Doe. Doe had come to power after staging a coup d'état in 1980. After five years of military dictatorship, and due to pressure for political reform, Doe's military junta agreed to a programme of democratization which culminated in Doe being elected, allegedly fraudulently, as the first president of the new republic. Notwithstanding its professed commitment to constitutionalism and the rule of law, the violation of human rights continued under the new civilian regime. These human rights abuses, coupled with a growing economic crisis, led to the outbreak of the conflict.

The object of this article is to consider whether the ownership of expropriated property of aliens also passes to the expropriating state if the expropriation purporting to be nationalisation is not accompanied by compensation. It deals only with property (including enterprises) located within the territory of the nationalising state and belonging to aliens. The appropriation by governmental agencies of (enemy) property during or in connection with a war will not be discussed.

On the night of Sunday 27—Monday 28 April 1958, the curtain fell on a diplomatic performance on the Geneva scene which had lasted for nine weeks: the Conference on the Law of the Sea. Driving back to the hotel from the Palais des Nations one could not help comparing the result of this Conference held under the aegis of the United Nations with the corresponding section of its predecessor of 1930 at The Hague, organised by the League of Nations, and being struck by two parallels and two differences. The two Conferences had in common that they had both been thoroughly prepared legally, and that it proved impossible to reach any agreement on one of the fundamental questions discussed, viz. the breadth of the territorial sea. But they differed in that, as far as the law of the sea was concerned, the Geneva Conference covered a much wider field than that of The Hague as it dealt not only with the territorial sea but also with the high seas and the continental shelf, and that they drew different conclusions from their failure to reach agreement on the breadth of the territorial sea, because while the Conference of 1930 ended with no convention at all concerning this subject, its successor of 1958 adopted one in spite of the important gaps left. The Conference of 1958 was moreover attended by a much larger number of States.

Hall's statement, widely quoted by writers on State succession, has retained a good deal of its validity. From Grotius to O'Connell, a long series of distinguished publicists have attempted to throw light upon the doctrinal obscurity of the problem. Many of them have displayed remarkable juristic imagination, but have also shown a regrettable lack of precision and discipline. In their justification, however, it must be conceded that the abundant judicial and diplomatic practice on State succession has always been—and still is—contradictory and obscure.

Bij de legenwoordige zware belastingdruk oefent de vrijstelling van belasting over genoten inkomen, aan bepaalde functies op internationaal terrein verbunden, een magische werking uit op hen, die niet op dit voorrecht kunnen aanspraak maken. Met ontstemming nemen zij, die een groot deel van hun zuur verdiende penningen in de grijpgrage handen van de fiscus zien verdwijnen, kennis van het feit, dat de naar hun oordeel toch reeds buitensporig hoge salarissen, op dit gebied betaald, bovendien nog vrij van belasting zijn. Het kornt ons wel nuttig voor in deze tijd, nu het scheppen van nieuwe internationale organen aan de orde van de dag is, aan deze vrijstellingen enkele beschouwingen te wijden.

On 4th October, 1957, a man-made machine forche first time overrode the age old law proclaiming that everything that goes up must come down. Fifteen months later a means was developed of circumventing the earth's attraction. In September, 1959, the moon was reached and on 12th April, 1961, Major Gagarin orbited the Earth in a space capsule. In the short period of four years man's advance in space has been more rapid than the most sanguine forecaster has dared to predict, and it is now realized that a new phase in the history of mankind of exploration and development has begun in some ways comparable to, but vastly exceeding these in scope, the conquest of the sea and the air. Nobody can visualize the impact the conquest of space is going to have on life on this planet, but it becomes clearer every day that a process of change has started more profound and more sweeping than any which has overtaken the world since the foundation of the modern world.

The quest for clear-cut legal structures in corporate bodies is not only propelled by dogmatic interest, but often also from shaken confidence and frustrated expectations. When in October 1985 a leading official of the International Tin Council, the manager of its buffer stock, declared that the Council was henceforward no longer able to meet its financial commitments and when subsequently no agreement on the settlement of outstanding claims could be reached, the Council's creditors as well as its members were faced with a host of legal issues for which the general rules of public international law provide no easily extricable guidance. In the face of the insolvency of an international organization the recourse to measures of liquidation as provided for in national company laws or the determination of the position of the organization's creditors vis-à-vis the member States cannot follow the broad path of consolidated State practice and legal doctrine.