Het probleem van de natuur en de inhoud van de souvereiniteit over het luchtruim is een probleem, dat voor de internationale luchtvaart in het algemeen en voor de Nederlandse luchtvaart in het bijzonder van essentieel belang is.

Voor de internationale luchtvaart in het algemeen, omdat door de luchtvaart voor het eerst in de historie elke Staat met iedere andere Staat direct contact kan onderhouden. Voor Nederland in het bijzonder, omdat de politieke macht van ons land onevenredig is aan de krachten, die het in de internationale luchtvaart ontwikkelt. In de lijst van Staten, die internationaal luchtverkeer bedrijven, neemt Nederland de 4de plaats in na de Verenigde Staten, Engeland en Frankrijk.

De Commissie voor Internationaal Recht van de Verenigde Naties hield, onder voorzitterschap van de Zweed Sandström, te Parijs van 3 Juni tot 28 Juli 1954 haar 6e bijeenkomst. Het was de eerste vergadering sinds de 8e Algemene Vergadering, waarin nieuwe verkiezingen hadden plaats gehad, tengevolge waarvan vier der leden (de Amerikaan Manley Hudson, de Panamees Alfaro, de Colombiaan Yepes en de Rus Kozhevnikov) door nieuwe leden (de Amerikaan Parker, de Cubaan Garcia Amador, de Boliviaan Salamanca en de Rus Krylov, vroeger Rechter in het Internationaal Gerechtshof) waren vervangen. Behalve de heer Krylov, om gezondheidsredenen afwezig, en de heer Parker, die inmiddels weder ontslag had genomen, was de Commissie voltallig. In deze Amerikaanse vacature werd tijdens de zitting voorzien door benoeming van de door de Amerikaanse Regering voorgestelde, in volkenrechtelijke kringen overigens onbekende, Californische rechter Edmonds.

La Commission du Droit International a tenu sa septième session à Genève, du 2 mai au 8 juillet 1955. Toute la session était vouée à l'étude de deux questions du droit de la mer, le régime de la haute mer et celui de la mer territoriale.

Ten years ago, on April 6th, 1945, Benjamin Marius Telders died in the concentration-camp at Bergen-Belsen. With him the Netherlands lost not only an outstanding international lawyer but also one of its greatest sons.

The son of a well known legal family, Telders grew up in the Hague. Already, while still a student at the University of Leyden, he was fascinated by international law and an essay, written when he was twenty, on Robert Cecil's Treaty of Guaranty1 won an award from the Marburg Fund. At the end of his studies in the Faculty of Law he defended his thesis “Staat en Volkenrecht” (The State and the Law of Nations)2, in which he sought to rehabilitate Hegels legal philosophy. He attempted to show that the German philosopher was far from having been the grave digger of international law that he had hitherto been represented as being. When reading this book it is difficult to decide which is the more to be admired: the clarity of the exposition or the maturity of the legal thought.

When the International Military Tribunal on October 1, 1946, pronounced judgment on 22 Germans accused as major war criminals, a truly historic trial came to an end. It was the first such tribunal constituted by a number of Great Powers and in the interests of all the United Nations. Since the beginning of the modern state system, this was the first time that die leaders of a Great Power, its statesmen, soldiers, journalists and propagandists were held accountable for crimes against peace and humanity, which themselves were substantial innovations or developments. Ordinary war crimes, usually within the province of domestic military courts, were also for the first time tried by an international tribunal.

Tout droit pénal est, sauf quelques exceptions, un droit national, émanant d'un législateur national. Il y a eu, après la guerre, la juridiction des grands crimes de guerre, qui était une juridiction internationale ne relevant pas directement des états nationaux. On a vu dans le traité sur la C. E. D. la tentative avortée d'une juridiction pénale militaire relevant uniquement d'une autorité supranationale. Mais abstraction faite de ces exemples exceptionnels d'un droit pénal régi par des règles internationales ou supranationales, l'ordre public est assuré pénalement par les juridictions nationales appliquant leur loi nationale.

Domicil is an important legal concept in the United States. It plays a particularly significant role in conflict of laws (private international law), where it affects such broad areas as judicial jurisdiction, choice of law and governmental benefits and burdens. As to the first area a state has in personam judicial jurisdiction over its domiciliaries whether or not they are physically within its territory at the time of service of process. And, under prevailing conceptions, only the state where at least one of the spouses is domiciled has jurisdiction to terminate their marriage by divorce. One cannot be a citizen of a state of the United States unless one is domiciled there. This means that the parties must have different domicils for a federal court to have jurisdiction over an action between them on the ground that they are “Citizens of different States” within the meaning of Article III, Section 2, of the Constitution. In the second area, choice of law, the law of a man's domicil controls such matters relating to his personal status as legitimacy, adoption, emancipation (if minor), and the validity of his marriage. The same law governs the transfer of personal property upon death and therefore determines such questions as the validity of a will dealing with personalty and the division of such property in the event of an intestacy. With respect to the third area, it is the state of domicil which allows a man to vote and to hold public office. Conversely, this state can subject the individual to various types of personal taxation and, perhaps of greatest importance in this connection, can impose an inheritance tax upon all of his intangibles. Whether or not the defendant is domiciled in a particular state is also a material factor to be considered in determining whether he is a nonresident ofthat state within the meaning of a provision tolling the statutory period of limitation.

Après une période préparatoire au cours de laquelle la nouvelle Cour Internationale de Justice a arrêté son règlement de procédure en date du 16 mai 1946, elle a maintenant rendu la justice pendant sept années. Il est difficile d'indiquer exactement combien de procédures elle a traitées dans cette période. Quatre affaires portées devant elle ont été rayées de son rôle après quelques actes introductifs de procédure; d'autres ont été échelonnées sur des phases procédurales successives et, par conséquent, sur des procédures séparées; dans d'autres encore, la procédure proprement dite a été précédée d'un prélude, ou suivie d'une finale à la suite de jugements interlocutoires de nature divergente.

The presence of foreign troops in the territory of a sovereign State (referred to hereinafter as the receiving State) involves a conflict of jurisdiction between the States concerned and consequently poses a question which is per definitionem one of international law. The question has been discussed by many writers, but there have been some recent developments in this field which render it useful to consider the problem again.

«En 1939 nous commencions à avoir quelques lumières sur la guerre de 1870 et sur les circonstances d'où sortit la guerre de 1914: les archives internationales lâchaient leurs secrets avec réticence – pas toutes et pas tous – mais enfin le coup de la dépêche d'Ems était presque élucidé et les historiens ne désespéraient pas d'établir avant 1950 ce qui s'était réellement passé au cours du mois de juillet 1914.

In 1947 there came before the Court of Appeals of Amsterdam a case concerning a claim by a resident of the Netherlands against a Hungarian Bank, which claim was based on a contract governed by the law of the State of New York. One of the questions to be decided by the Court was whether the fact that Hungarian exchange control regulations prohibited the Bank from effecting that payment to a non-resident would necessitate the rejection of the plaintiff's claim.

Although there is abundant literature about the legal aspects of nationality, its consequences in law and the extent of jurisdiction in connection therewith, there is very little adequate appreciation of the growth and evolution of nationality.

It is obvious that the birth of the State of Israel gives rare opportunities to observe the gradual development of loyalty feelings, of common understanding and of the influence of a common purpose in moulding the aspirations of a people.

In de Staat Israël heeft men, aanstonds na de onafhankelijkheids-verklaring (1948), besloten tot het ontwerpen van een uniform-nationaal privaatrecht. Een nuttige en nodige taak, speciaal op het stuk van het familie- en erfrecht, totnogtoe versnipperd, immers verschillend naar gelang van de religieuze groep waartoe de betrokkene behoort, en tegelijk onoverzichtelijk door gebrek aan wettelijke vastlegging. De Afdeling Wetgeving van het Ministerie van Justifie, geleid door Dr. Uri Yadin, heeft zieh ten deze met loffelijke activiteit aan het werk gezet, en haar eerste productie, een ontwerp-erfrecht, ligt thans voor mij zowel in de Hebreeuwse text als in de Engelse vertaling vervaardigd door Harvard Law School — Israël Cooperative Research.

Among the institutions created by the Treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community (E.C.S.C.), the Court of Justice deserves special attention of lawyers interested in the development of international organisation. Indeed the position of this Court within the framework of the Treaty is profoundly original insofar as its functions cover the judicial settlement of disputes between member states and the judicial review of the decisions of other institutions of the E.C.S.C. on the complaint of the private individuals involved. Furthermore the Court is entrusted with a few tasks of a “constitutional” character, such as giving a binding opinion on the applicability of the special procedure of amending the Treaty before the proposed amendment is put to the final vote (art. 95).

It would be a remarkable and astonishing thing: to find a generally acceptable definition of aggression. We know that all endeavours up till now failed completely, including the labours of the Special Committee on defining aggression, that met in New York last year.

When we look at its report, we see in the Annexes draft-definitions of aggression and suggestions as to definitions. In view of this the French member of the Committee at the time stated that, in his opinion, the Committee had carried out its terms of reference, viz. “to submit draft definitions of aggression or draft statements of the notion of aggression”. I would submit that the Special Committee did not carry out its functions in this regard. In the Annexes of the Report drafts are given proposed by individual members of the Committee. Those drafts were not drafts of the Committee, but drafts of some of its members.

As the rapporteur of the 1953-Committee on International Criminal Jurisdiction, I should like to introduce its Report to the Sixth Committee, and to outline shortly the history of the topic of International Criminal Jurisdiction which led to the 1953-Committee on International Criminal Jurisdiction.

The origin of the topic of International Criminal Jurisdiction is without the slightest doubt the post-war trials, especially those of Nuremberg and Tokyo. In his report to President Truman Justice Biddle had stated: “the conclusions of Nuremberg may be ephemeral or significant. That depends whether we now take the next steps…”

This “next step” could only two things.

Réveillée par la catastrophe mondiale qu'était la dernière guerre, favorisée par la confusion causée par celle-ci et s'inspirant de l'exemple donné par des voisins plus avancés, l'indonésie engagea, en 1945, la lutte pour son indépendance. Ses efforts furent couronnés de succès et le 27 décembre 1949 la souveraineté fut transférée à la République dite des Etats-Unis d'Indonésie Ainsi s'est dissoute brusquement une symbiose étatique ayant existé entre les populations de l'archipel indonésien et le peuple néerlandais pendant plus de trois siècles.