It has been thirty years since the publication of Professor G. C. Christie’s well-known analysis of the state of international law on this question and ten years since the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal began to render awards on whether takings had occurred that required compensation under international law. Nearly fifty awards have included decisions on such claims, a number that constitutes a massive addition to the decisions of international tribunals on this subject. Only a few of the claims based upon alleged takings of property remain to be heard. In these circumstances, it seems appropriate to review the relevant decisions for the purpose of identifying the factors cited by the Tribunal in support of its findings that an alleged taking had or had not occurred.

Nongovernmental organizations are playing an increasingly important role in international litigation. This study will analyze the participation of nongovernmental organizations, primarily as amici curiae, in the proceedings of four permanent international courts: the International Court of Justice, the European Court of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. After discussing the impact of amici in national and regional courts, it recommends that the International Court of Justice expand its acceptance of submissions from nongovernmental organizations in appropriate cases. The Court has a jurisdictional basis to do so and amici have usefully contributed to cases before other courts.

The relationship between the International Court of Justice and the Security Council may be approached from the perspective of the United Nations Charter and the way it delimits competences between two principal UN organs and regulates the exercise of their concurrent powers. The Court, however, has a dual, ambivalent role. It is not only the principal judicial organ of the United Nations under Article 92 of the Charter; it is also an autonomous adjudicative body with the function, under Article 38 of its Statute, of applying international law to such disputes between states as are brought before it. Viewed in the light of Questions of Interpretation and Application of the 1971 Montreal Convention Arising from the Aerial Incident at Lockerbie, the relationship between the judicial and political organs raises some fundamental questions of general international law that go beyond UN constitutional issues.

In June 1994, some twelve years after the conclusion of the Third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea, the UN Secretary-General reported to the General Assembly that informal consultations had led to agreements that appeared to have removed the obstacles to general adherence to the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

This paper analyzes the legal implications of the Draft Resolution and Draft Agreement Relating to the Implementation of Part XI of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982, as well as the effectiveness of the proposed arrangements under international law.

On July 28, 1994, the United States voted at the United Nations General Assembly in favor of a resolution endorsing the new Agreement that essentially amends the deep seabed regime (Part XI) of the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea and calls on states to ratify the Convention. Shortly thereafter, it signed the new Agreement. Plans call for the Convention to be submitted to the Senate for its advice and consent to ratification in October 1994 and for hearings to be held during the next Congress in the spring of 1995. By signing the Agreement, the United States will provisionally apply the deep seabed regime, as amended, until the United States becomes a party to the Convention or decides not to do so. In this paper I examine whether such provisional application is appropriate under the U.S. system of government.

On June 20, 1994, Ambassador Harriet C. Babbit, the U.S. Permanent Representative to the Organization of American States, deposited on behalf of the U.S. Government the instrument of ratification of the “Protocol of Washington,” adopted on December 14, 1992, by the Sixteenth Special Session of the General Assembly of the Organization of American States and signed by the United States on January 23, 1993, and the “Protocol of Managua,” adopted by the Nineteenth Special Session of the OAS General Assembly on June 10, 1993, and signed that day by the United States. The U.S. Senate had given its advice and consent to ratification of the Protocols on May 17, 1994, with two-thirds of the Senators present and concurring.

Throughout modern history, there have only been three internationally established commissions to investigate war crimes and prepare for eventual prosecutions before international and national judicial bodies: the 1919 Commission on the Responsibilities of the Authors of the War and on Enforcement of Penalties for Violations of the Laws and Customs of War (1919 Commission), the 1943 United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC), and the Commission of Experts established pursuant to Security Council Resolution 780 (1992) to investigate violations of international humanitarian law in the former Yugoslavia (Commission of Experts). Even though there are no connections among the three bodies, there is enough historical precedential value in the first two as the antecedents of the Commission of Experts to warrant a brief examination.

The fiftieth session of the UN Human Rights Commission took place in Geneva between January 31 and March 11, 1994, under the chairmanship of Peter P. van Wulfften Palthe of the Netherlands. During its annual six weeks of rhetoric and resolutions, the Commission adopted 109 resolutions and decisions, most by consensus. It adopted resolutions or took other actions addressing human rights violations in thirty countries.

The memorandum of understanding (MOU) is a well-accepted type of legal instrument in international law and practice. Indeed, it was recognized as such by the British expert Lord McNair, who, in his classic work on the law of treaties, identified the MOU as “an informal but nevertheless legal agreement” between two or more parties.