The Oil Nationalization Act passed unanimously by both houses of the Iranian Parliament in March, 1951, raised once more the long-standing issue of Iran's claim to sovereignty over Bahrayn. The Iranian extremists, from both the left-wing Tudeh Party and the right-wing Fida'iyan Islam group, at first criticized Parliament for its silence about the oil of Bahrayn but, when the law for the expropriation of the Anglo-Iranian Company was enacted in April, they demanded that these laws should in like manner be applied to the Bahrayn Petroleum Company, jointly owned by the Standard Oil Company of California and the Texas Company, on the grounds that the Bahrayn Islands form a part of Iranian territory.

If, after the nineteenth century, there remained any question concerning the universality of international law, or of its fundamental rules, it appeared to be largely one of legal history. But as the world of the twentieth century has come to be divided by political ideologies, their legal ramifications have given the question new actuality as one of basic legal theory. That the Family of Nations, or the subjects of international law, embraced virtually all states of the world seemed no longer open to serious doubt when non-Christian states wholly outside Europe took part in the Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907 and when participation by such states was continued and further extended in the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and in the League of Nations. Yet the same period that saw the unquestioned global expansion of international law has had to face new challenges to its unity as a single, universally valid legal system. They were raised chiefly by German Nazis and Soviet Communists, or in turn against them by their respective critics and opponents. Confronted with these challenges, the universal validity of international law appears no longer as an existingphenomenon that may be traced back to its origins and on to its eventual completion, but as a debatable assumption that stands to be justified or rejected in the light of fresh examination.

There is general international acceptance at the present time of many limitations placed on the conduct of the forces of states engaged in armed conflict. It is generally agreed, for example, that prisoners of war must be treated humanely; that wounded, sick and shipwrecked members of armed forces must receive special attention; and that the position of noncombatants and persons in occupied territory must be safeguarded. Limitations on the use of gases and submarines, among others, have been widely accepted. The rules are recognized as binding even in the event of an illegal war and are accepted, at least to some extent, even by nations and groups not parties to the treaties and conventions which have sought to set forth general limitations.

The Treaty of Peace concluded in Paris between the United States and Spain on December 10, 1898, ending the Spanish-American war, provided in Article III that “Spain cedes to the United States the archipelago known as the Philippine Islands and comprehending the islands lying within the following lines…” In another treaty concluded between the same countries on November 7, 1900, it was provided in the Sole Article that

The question of recognition by an international organization of the representation of a Member State, a question recently considered by the General Assembly of the United Nations as a result of a proposal by Cuba, had previously engaged the attention of several international bodies. For instance, after the Italian conquest of Ethiopia, the Credentials Committeeof the Assembly of the League of Nations was confronted with the issue of the seating of Ethiopian representatives in the Assembly.

Edwin M. Borchard, lawyer, scholar, teacher, public servant, and kindly humanitarian, died July 22, 1951, after a lingering illness. Born in New York, October 17, 1884, he received his LL.B. at New York Law School in 1905 and a Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1913. He was awarded honorary degrees of Doctor of Laws by the University of Berlin in 1925 and by the University of Budapest in 1935. He served as expert on international law to the American Agency, North Atlantic Coast Fisheries Arbitration at The Hague in 1910; as Law Librarian of Congress from 1911 to 1913 and from 1914 to 1916; as Assistant Solicitor, Department of State, 1913-1914; as chief counsel for Peru in the Tacna-Arica Arbitration; as special legal adviser to the Treasury Department; as technical adviser to theAmerican Delegation to The Hague Codification Conference of 1930; and as a member of the Pan American Committee of Experts for the Codification of International Law.

The nationalization of foreign-owned property presents problems which put a severe strain upon some of the accepted principles of international law. Chandler Anderson, one of the founding members of the American Society of International Law, pointed out nearly a quarter of a century ago that the principle which safeguards foreign-owned property from confiscation in time of peace “has become a part of the law of nations not merely because it represents a universally recognized standard ofjustice, but also because it is absolutely essential for the welfare of every nation, for without its protection no commercial, or financial international intercourse could safely be carried on.” Since that time, the practice of expropriating foreign property by "nationalization" has spread from Soviet Kussia to other countries constituting important parts of the free world strongly opposed to Communism.

Two recent books illustrate current trends of thought as to the conduct of nations within the community of nations. They do not present new attitudes; they represent the long struggle between advancing law and the maintenance of the interest of individual units of society.

Recent critics of the Department of State have complained that “under its present leadership” the policy of the Department has been “ to go slow, play cautious, and be nice.” It is claimed that such a tactic is bound to be ineffectual in dealing with Moscow and Prague. Other critics have complained that the Department has failed to respond vigorously to the charges hurled at it by hostile politicians within the country; the Department seems, it is said, to have tried to avoid or evade or run away from controversy. It depends on public support for successful operations in many ways but does not try very hard to win that support. The second situation differs notably from the first, of course, being a case in domestic rather than international politics, but the choice involved is substantially the same in the art of group dynamics and constitutes an important problem, apart entirely from the substance of the questions at issue between the Department and its opponents, domestic or foreign.

The order of the International Court of Justice, under date of July 5, 1951, in the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company Case, has raised a number of interesting questions of law and procedure in respect to which there appears to be considerable controversy.

The Judgment of November 20,1950, of the International Court of Justice in the Colombian-Peruvian Asylum Case provides a noteworthy illustration of the judicial technique employed in making a determination as to the existence or non-existence of a rule of customary international law in a particular case.

The relation of municipal law to international law is properly a subject of inquiry by both practitioners and theoreticians. That all the questions which arise in this connection have not been settled will appear from continuing discussions concerning monism and dualism, the concept of domestic jurisdiction questions, and the doctrine of self-executing treaties. Cases of clear conflict between national law in the form of statutes and that which comprises international obligations tend to receive much publicity, and properly so. The extent to which there has been conformity of national legislation to customary international law and treaties seems to have received less attention. Techniques used to secure such conformity will appear to some extent from the manner in which statute-makers have by express provisions taken cognizance of the law of nations in written or unwritten form.

The Fourth Meeting of Consultation of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of American States took place in Washington from March 26 to April 7, 1951. This meeting, reasonably successful, again reflected the general world situation, the status of development of the Pan American idea and the crucial problem of the relations, within Pan America, of this country toward Latin America.

Dr. Antonio Sánchez de Bustamante y Sirvén, a giant in the field of international law, passed away at his home in Havana, Cuba, on August 24, 1951, at the age of 86. As a writer, teacher, judge and advocate in matters relating to public and private international law he had attained world prominence.

For two and a half years, Colombia and Peru have engaged in a controversy regarding the status as a political offender and the ultimate disposition of Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, long-time chief of the leftist Alianza Popular Revolucianaria Americana (APBA), who was granted asylum in the Colombian Embassy at Lima on January 3, 1949. Several months of fruitless diplomatic negotiation between the parties were followed by their submission of the case to the International Court of Justice which, in turn, has dealt with various aspects of the matter in the course of three successive judgments.

The postwar cultural isolationism towards the West and a specifically Soviet complex of inferiority inherited from the early years of the regime have produced since the last war an attitude of self-assertion. This somehow childish attitude is expressed, among others, by a frenzy of claims to Russian priorities not only in regard to technological inventions, but also in respect to the learned theories. The Soviet scholars seem to forget that the priority of a thinker in stating a concept, though important in itself, does not reduce another ’ s merit of fully developing a new concept in all its intellectual aspects; moreover, the importance of an intellectual must also be measured by the actual influence he exerted upon his contemporaries and the succeeding generations. A Russian writer may have preceded Bodin in formulating the idea of the state supreme power, but this does not alter the fact that Bodin was the first to establish a fully developed theory of sovereignty, nor does it diminish the Frenchman’s influence upon many generations. However, this Soviet frenzy of claiming priorities may have one beneficial result, namely, it might enrich our knowledge of the older Russian thought. The West is fairly familiar with some Russian thinkers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but knows next to nothing concerning their predecessors. This is why one may read with interest V. I. Zuev’s article:“The Priority of Russian Juristic Thought in the Establishment and Development of the Theory of Sovereignty” (Sovetskoe Gosudarstvo i Pravo, No. 3, March, 1951, pp. 24-37). This article presents another interest as well: It illustrates the Soviet opposition to the contemporary Western tendency to get rid of the encumbering dogma of state sovereignty; the concept of state sovereignty provides a theoretical basis for Soviet foreign policy, especially within the United Nations, and supplies the necessary arguments for denying the superiority of international law over municipal law:

Efforts are being made in the United Nations toward a greater integration in one field of international legislation which are different from those undertaken on earlier occasions (such as in the case of the Buenos Aires Treaty of 1936 to Co-ordinate Existing Treaties, or even of the Pact of Bogotá of 1948 and the 1949 Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others), and which do not seem to have attracted much attention. They are therefore briefly described hereafter.

The remarkable achievement of the Conference on Protection of Victims of War, which sat at Geneva from April 21 to August 12,1949, stands out as a landmark in the history of international legislation. It was possible only because of a long and patient course of preparation, chiefly due to the efforts of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

This writer wants to bring to the notice of his colleagues in the world that the first Hispano-Luso-American Congress of International Law will be held during October of this year in Madrid. The initiative has been taken by a group of Spanish professors and institutions of international law. The preparatory commission is presided over by the well-known international lawyer of the University of Madrid, Yanguas Messia; Dr. Luis Garcia Arias is its Secretary.