The Rhine is governed by an international regime. This dates back to 1804 when the Patent Treaty was signed between France and the German Empire. It contained the first rules relating to the abolition of the many local tolls and regulations and assigned responsibility for shipping and tasks related to this activity to a central organ. This process of internationalization was not abandoned during the Congress of Vienna. The Central Commission for Navigation on the Rhine, consisting of delegates from the riparian States, was set up in 1815 and was commissioned to draw up a new set of international rules on the basis of guidelines established by the Congress. The principle that navigation on the Rhine ‘sous le rapport du commerce’ [commercial shipping] should not be prohibited to anyone was a fundamental assumption in Vienna. Apart from this freedom of shipping — both in an economic and in a nautical sense — the aim was to abolish, or at least restrict, national tolls, duties and taxes, and to introduce a uniform approach in the traffic regulations applicable to the Rhine.

The Iran-United States Claims Tribunal (hereinafter, the ‘Tribunal’) established by virtue of the Claims Settlement Declaration of 19 January 1981 has:

‘the purpose of deciding claims of nationals of the United States against Iran and claims of nationals of Iran against the United States, and any counterclaim which arises out of the same contract, transaction or occurrence that constitutes the subject matter of that national's claim, if such claims and counterclaims are outstanding on the date of this Agreement, whether or not filed with any court, and arise out of debts, contracts (including transactions which are the subject of letters of credit or bank guarantees), expropriation or other measures affecting property rights …’

Since 1813 the Kingdom of the Netherlands has concluded over 6,000 treaties. It has a long standing practice, which took shape particularly after World War II, when international relations became part of the daily life of nations and the number of treaties increased dramatically, and again after the revision of the Dutch Constitution in 1953, when the relationship between the powers of the Government and Parliament regarding treaties was finally established. Current practice is determined by two characteristics. The first is the constitutional provision that, except in certain specified cases, consent for the Kingdom of the Netherlands to be bound by a treaty cannot be given unless the treaty has been approved by Parliament. In practice the rule is interpreted in such a way as to strike a balance between the Government's need to conduct an efficient and effective foreign policy and Parliament's need to exercise proper supervision over that policy. The second characteristic is that, in applying these constitutional provisions (for text see Appendix 1), the term ‘treaty’ is interpreted substantively. Whether an instrument substantively constitutes a treaty is also a matter of interpretation, since international instruments vary so much in form and content that many of them are scarcely covered by the brief constitutional provisions on treaties.