In His De Jure Belli ac Paris, Grotius, quoting Cicero, stated that “there is no Middle between War and Peace,” and this sentiment seems to have received general agreement well into the twentieth century. Thus, in Janson v. Driefontein Consolidated Mines, Lord Macnaghten stated: “I think the learned counsel for the respondent was right in saying that the law recognises a state of peace and a state of war, but that it knows nothing of an intermediate state which is neither one thing nor the other — neither peace nor war.” One might have thought that the English courts would have abandoned this view in the light of their own experience during the Manchukuo incident, for by 1939 in Kawasaki Kisen Kabushiki Kaisha of Kobe v. Bantham S.S. Co. the Court of Appeal was prepared to concede that “war” might exist for some commercial purposes but not in so far as other legal relationships were concerned.

The philosophy postulating the protection of human rights is based on values that are fundamental to western civilization. These values found expression in Jerusalem and in Athens. The divine command to love one’s neighbour as one loves oneself and to obey God’s laws is the basis of the sovereign’s duty to respect these “unwritten and immutable divine laws” of which Sophocles speaks. It took many centuries before these rights, “droits naturels et imprescriptible de l’homme,” were recognized by the state to the extent that their breach was supposed to entitle the citizens to revolt.

On Sait Que l’élection québécoise du 15 novembre 1976 a porté au pouvoir un parti politique, le Parti québécois (P.Q.), dont le programme de gouvernement prévoit l’accession du Québec à la pleine souveraineté étatique assortie d’une libre association de nature économique (et plus ou moins confédérale) avec le reste du Canada. On sait aussi que l’Etat québécois constitue pour l’instant l’un des dix Etats membres de la fédération canadienne et jouit par conséquent, en qualité d’Etat fédéré, de certaines compétences autonomes: celles que prévoit la “constitution canadienne” — c’est-à-dire, plus précisément, le British North America Act de 1867 (loi du Parlement britannique) tel qu’interprété par la jurisprudence.

The Case of the Polish art treasures in Canada presents two important issues: the question of immunity of a foreign state’s public movable property and the question of state responsibility for such property.

Removal from Poland and Entry into Canada

In 1940 the Canadian government permitted the duty free entry into Canada, as property of the Polish state, of a number of cases and trunks containing Polish art treasures which had been removed from the museum at the Wawel Royal Castle in Cracow before invading German armies could seize them. The treasures were stored in the Records Storage Building at the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa, on the clear understanding that Canada was to assume no responsibility for their safekeeping. At no time was an inventory of the treasures given to the Canadian government.

The decision of the ad hoc court of arbitration on the delimitation of the continental shelf between the United Kingdom and France is undoubtedly the most important addition to the body of law relating to the delimitation of the continental shelf since the decision of the International Court of Justice in the North Sea Continental Shelf cases. The reasons for the decision will be of particular interest in Canada in view of unsettled boundaries with the United States on the east and west coasts and in the Beaufort Sea, and with France in respect of St. Pierre and Miquelon. The arbitration was a consequence of the inability of France and the United Kingdom to settle by negotiation their continental shelf boundary westward of 30 degrees west of Greenwich to the outer limit of the shelf. The principal difficulties were the effect to be given to the Channel Islands and the method for delimiting the area of shelf lying beyond the land of either country out into the Atlantic, the area denoted by the tribunal as the “Atlantic region.”

Competing Goals in Formulating a Code of Conduct on Restrictive Business Practices

For the past thirty years efforts to formulate and implement acceptable international norms to regulate restrictive business practices (R.B.P.’s) affecting international trade have largely failed. Yet, none can deny the necessity of such international norms in the face of the inability of national legal systems to cope with an economic order of international dimensions. The abortive International Trade Organization, as part of the Havana Charter of 1948, and the Draft E.C.O.S.O.C. International Agreement of 1953, which were originally initiated by the United States, were eventually rejected by it because “the various national policies, legislation, and enforcement procedures in this field were not sufficiently comparable.”

J’ai eu l’occasion de consulter de façon exhaustive, au cours de l’été 1976 les dossiers du Ministère canadien des Affaires extérieures susceptibles de contenir des certificats destinés à être présentés en Gour. Je me propose de donner ici un bref résumé des principes qui en guident l’émission, ainsi qu’un aperçu de la forme qu’ils revêtent.

1. Les principes

Un certificat du Ministère des Affaires extérieures est un document émis par le Secrétaire d’Etat aux Affaires extérieures ou par un fonctionnaire du Ministère, établissant l’existence de certains faits et dans certains cas de certaines règles de droit qui y sont liées, dont le Ministère est susceptible d’avoir connaissance de par ses attributions. Normalement, la Cour ne mettra pas en doute le contenu du certificat, dont elle prendra connaissance judiciaire.

Les Tentatives de création d’une Cour pénale internationale sont relativement anciennes et leur histoire fait l’objet d’une abondante littérature. Un autre rapport de l’auteur de la présente étude illustre les efforts accomplis en vue d’instituer cette Cour. A ce propos, il convient de remarquer que déjà en 1937, vingt-quatre pays signaient une convention pour la prévention et la répression du terrorisme, et que treize Etats signaient une convention pour la création d’une Cour pénale internationale.

The Reference Under Article 177

Article 164 of the Treaty of Rome sets up a Court of Justice of the Communities whose task it is to ensure that “in the interpretation and application of the Treaty the law is observed.” The Court exercises this jurisdiction in various ways. It can hear actions against member states for violations of the Treaty and it can review the legality of the acts — or lack of action — of the Community organs. The Court of Justice also has a more or less plenary jurisdiction over certain purely Community matters. In none of these areas, however, has the Court had to deal with the sensitive issue of the relationship between municipal law and Community Law; this issue has come before it only by way of the reference under Article 177 of the Treaty of Rome.

Le 1er Janvier 1977 le Canada porta la limite de ses zones de pêche au large de la côte est et de la côte ouest à 200 milles marins de la côte. Une autre zone de pêche semblable fut créée deux mois plus tard au large de l’archipel arctique. Même si les intérêts de nombreux pays membres de la commission internationale des pêcheries de l’Atlantique du nord-ouest (C.I.P.A.N.) et de la commission des pêcheries du Pacifique du nord risquaient d’être sérieusement compromis, aucun état ne contesta cette décision du gouvernement canadien. Ceci résultait de plusieurs facteurs, entre autres les développements au sein de la troisième conférence des Nations Unies sur le droit de la mer et l’évolution des relations entre les 16 états membres de la C.I.P.A.N. Mais sur le plan pratique, le facteur principal, du moins à court terme, semble avoir été la signature par le Canada d’une série d’accords bilatéraux avec les principaux états membres de la C.I.P.A.N. Les aspects saillants de ces accords bilatéraux ont été décrits par l’auteur dans une note antérieure publiée dans cette revue.

On december 14, 1974, the United Nations General Assembly adopted by consensus a draft resolution submitted by its Sixth (legal) Committee known as the Definition of Aggression. Adoption of this definition culminated years of effort, interspersed with numerous wars, by the international community. Here is not the place to enter into an elaborate discussion either of its history or contents. It will suffice to note that its antecedents can be traced back to the 1815 Triple Alliance, the 1907 Hague Conventions, the League of Nations, and the 1945 Inter-American Act of Chapultapec. From 1952 to 1974, however, at least four United Nations special committees grappled with the task of this definition, made more crucial by the growing diversity of techniques of aggression and the restraintson responding to aggression imposed by Article 51 of the Charter.

In the preface to his book, Superior Orders in National and International Law, Professor Green mentions that “… in 1972 the Canadian Department of Justice on behalf of [the Office of] the Judge Advocate General of the Department of National Defence, invited me to undertake a survey of the defence of superior orders in both national and international law … [and] the present book has grown out of the Report that materialized from these studies.” It may be useful, or at least interesting, to readers of the book to preface this review with some of the background to the decision to ask Professor Green to undertake the study.