The result of the application of equitable principles must be equitable. … It is … the result which is predominant; the principles are subordinate to the goal.

The question of the legal validity of the acts and decisions adopted by international organizations in excess of their authority has attracted the attention of international lawyers, as well as international courts and tribunals, in recent years. However, no general principles or criteria for determining such validity have as yet been formulated by the international community. In the meantime, the question has continued to give rise to controversy within and outside international organizations and to gain in importance, because of persistent procedural irregularities and the increasing tendency of some of the organizations to take measures that are not expressly provided for in their constitutive instruments but that they consider necessary or essential for the effective discharge of their mandates.

Others, though content that treaties should be made in the mode proposed, are averse to their being the supreme law of the land. They insist, and profess to believe, that treaties like acts of assembly, should be repealable at pleasure. This idea seems to be new and peculiar to this country, but new errors, as well as new truths, often appear. These gentlemen would do well to reflect that a treaty is only another name for a bargain, and that it would be impossible to find a nation who would make any bargain with us, which should be binding on them absolutely, but on us only so long and so far as we may think proper to be bound by it.

The 34th session of the international Law Commission was held in Geneva from May 3 to July 23, 1982, and was chaired by the Commission’s dean, Professor Paul Reuter of France. This was the first meeting of the Commission in its new and enlarged composition. Its composition was new in the sense that all of its members were beginning a new 5-year term of office, the term of the former Commission having expired at the end of 1981. It was enlarged as a result of a decision taken by the General Assembly at its session in the fall of 1981 to expand the membership of the ILC from 25 to 34.

On December 17, 1982, the House of Representatives adopted a resolution supporting an expansion of the advisory opinion jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice. The resolution (H.R. Con. Res. 86) urges the President to explore the appropriateness of establishing a United Nations committee to seek advisory opinions from the ICJ. The committee would act when asked by a national court seeking advice regarding any international law question under the national court’s jurisdiction.

On February 3, 1983, Senator John Heinz (R., Pa.) introduced in the 98th Congress, with Senator John Chafee (R., R.I.) as principal cosponsor, a proposal to amend the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) of 1977. The bill had been approved by the Senate on November 23, 1981, after the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs had made certain changes in the amendments originally proposed by Senator Chafee. Although a subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce held extensive hearings on the FCPA, it never reported the proposed legislation, and the 97th Congress adjourned in December 1982 without completing action on the proposal.