Will there be a timely and successful conclusion to the Law of the Sea Conference? This is the basic question governments and interested members of the public are considering as they review the results of the organizational session of the Conference at UN Headquarters in New York from December 3 to December 15, 1973, and the first substantive session in Caracas from June 20 to August 29, 1974. During this review they face ever more pressing problems arising from the strategic, economic, scientific, and environmental use and importance of the oceans and ocean resources, intensified by growing concern with international trade and with supplies and prices of food and basic raw materials.

The purpose of this article is to examine the work of the First Main Committee of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea at Caracas, with particular attention to the question of the system of exploration and exploitation of the seabed beyond the limits of national jurisdiction. This is the area which the United Nations General Assembly in 1970 had characterized as constituting, together with its natural resources, the “common heritage of mankind” in the Declaration of Principles Governing the Sea-bed and the Ocean Floor, and the Subsoil Thereof, Beyond the Limits of National Jurisdiction.

In the case concerning the legality of French atmospheric nuclear testing in the South Pacific presently before the ICJ, an issue has been raised of far-reaching implications for the general law of state responsibility for environmental damage.

The 1974 Diplomatic Conference on the Reaffirmation and Development of International Humanitarian Law Applicable in Armed Conflicts was the first attempt by a full-fledged diplomatic conference in 25 years to create new law for the protection of victims of wars. It was also the first time in some 40 years that a diplomatic conference has taken up the question of restricting the use of conventional weapons. And it was the first time since before World War I that an international conference had looked extensively at the question of methods of attack and had weighed their impact on the civilian population.

The late Senator Bourke B. Hickenlooper's most famous legislative initiative—the so-called Hickenlooper Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act—has been defused, if not actually repealed, by a single-sentence section contained in the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973. Although its “apparent demise” had been prophesied for some time, the suddenness with which Congress finally administered the coup de grâce stunned most foreign investment observers and probably accounts for their failure to have proper obituary notices ready.

A conspicuous feature of current demands for a more equitable economic order is the idea of “just prices” or more broadly a just relationship of prices. Although the conception of a just price goes back to medieval philosophy, it has not acquired a generally accepted meaning in either economic or juridical thought and it certainly cannot be regarded as a technical term of art in international economic relations. Yet there is no doubt that the concept of the just price (as well as the closely related notion of a just relationship of prices) expresses political demands that are of considerable importance in the development of new international legal and institutional arrangements. It is particularly interesting to note that the concept which has long played a leading role in the grievances of the poor countries has recently received emphasis in the statements of spokesmen for the industrialized countries faced with the soaring prices of oil and minerals. The idea of linking justice to prices may seem to some to be a vain effort to mingle ethical and economic factors (possibly with overtones of medieval metaphysics) but the political realities cannot be wished away and the demands for fairness and equity in international pricing will have to be faced.