“A victim of man’s inhumanity to man, the refugee has been with us since the beginning of history.” History records the expulsion of the Moors and Jews from Spain, the scattering of the Huguenots to all corners of Europe, the departure of the émigrés during the French Revolution, the migration of the United Empire Loyalists, and the lengthy exodus of minority groups and sects from Europe to settle in North America. It was not until the twentieth century with its cataclysmic wars and revolutions, however, that the problem reached epic proportions and the international community became sufficiently organized to make serious efforts to manage the refugee movement on a global scale.

A particular form of group consciousness has recently re-emerged as a major factor on the global scene. It involves people everywhere coalescing around common cultural perspectives grounded in race, language, religion, shared historical experience, and a distinctive way of life. With culture as a generic and diffuse core, this type of identification is often perceived by individuals sharing it and by outsiders as transmitted intergenerationally and as ascriptive in nature. Its contemporary significance resides in the loyalty it has evoked and hence the saliency it has achieved as a focal point for a myriad of purposes.

La mise en place graduelle d’un marché commun en Europe a entrainé l’instauration progressive d’un “nouvel ordre juridique” dont la portée pourrait peut-être un jour se comparer à celle que le droit romain avait connu en son temps. Sommes-nous toujours conscients, dans les Etats tiers qui traitent avec les Communautés des Neuf, des ramifications, de l’étendue et du degré de pénétration du droit communautaire européen, droit qui prolifère parallèlement aux législations nationales traditionnelles et qui, bénéficie de la primauté sur la règie nationale ainsi que de “l’mmédiateté” d’application et généralement de l’introduction directe en droit interne? (régime exceptionnel en droit international)? Le droit communautaire dérivé est constitué de l’ensemble des règles multiformes promulguées par le Conseil et la Commission en vue de mettre en oeuvre les Traités de Paris et de Rome et les autres instruments constitutifs par lesquels les neuf Etats membres de la CEE se sont dépouillés d’une partie de leur souveraineté comme source de droit. Quant à ces instruments conventionnels, eux-mêmes tiennent davantage de la nature d’une constitution que de celle de traités internationaux classiques, s’ils en ont la facture.

II n’est pas rare, en droit international économique, de voir l’idée de commerce d’Etat associée essentiellement au problème du commerce avec les pays d’économie planifiée. Or, il faut préciser au point de départ que les dispositions actuelles du GATT sur ce sujet n’ont pas été conçues originalement pour répondre à ce problème. Dans le projet de Charte du commerce international présenté par les Etats-Unis en 1946, ces mêmes dispositions étaient destinées a résoudre les problèmes soulevés par le commerce d’Etat dans les économies de marché;

By specifying fundamental competences and liabilities, customary international legal principles concerning transnational pollution provide the framework for an approach to and an analysis of international environmental disputes in general. In the legal evaluation of disputes arising from the pollution of international watercourses, this basic function is particularly evident in cases where no binding environmental protection standards of a specific nature may be available as parameters for a decision on the legality of the claims of states concerning the use of a given international watercourse. Conversely, these customary principles also constitute the starting point for the further development of the law relating to the utilization of international watercourses in general and the enactment of concrete water quality standards in particular.

One of the least-known and certainly least-celebrated measures of arms control to be negotiated since the Second World War is the 1971 treaty prohibiting the emplacement of nuclear weapons on the seabed. Admittedly, it is not one of the more significant agreements of its kind, being a preventative “non-armament,” rather than a true disarmament measure, and relating to weapons which, although technically feasible, are not at present thought to be of any great military value. Nevertheless, it is important. At least one measure of the treaty’s significance is its role as a first step towards a more comprehensive demilitarization of this vast, new environment — the terrestrial analogue of outer space — which is only beginning to be opened up to human exploration and exploitation. The seabed, including the continental margin1 as well as the so-called “deep ocean floor,” covers no less than seventy per cent of the earth’s surface, or about one hundred million square miles.

Les principes généraux de droit sont reconnus par l’article 38, I du Statut de la Cour Internationale de Justice, comme faisant partie des sources du droit international public. Get article énonce:

La Cour, dont la mission est de régler conformément au droit international des différends qui lui sont soumis, applique: …

c) les principes généraux de droit reconnus par les nations civilisées;

Cependant ces principes ne sont pas définis au niveau de ce texte.

L’article 38 précité reprend ainsi, presque mot pour mot, les dispositions correspondantes du Statut de la Cour Permanente de Justice Internationale. En fonction de celui-ci, la jurisdiction internationale a quelquefois fait application des principes généraux de droit, qu’elle a dû tenter de définir.

The teaching of international law at Queen’s University in its early years took place mainly in the faculty of arts and science. The first, short-lived, law school offered a course of lectures from 1861 to 1864 and again from 1880 to 1883, when the faculty was disbanded, not to re-open until 1957. During the period 1861 to 1864 no specific course in international law was offered in the law school or in the faculty of arts.

When lectures in the law school resumed in 1880, one of the courses offered was Roman Law, for which one lecture per week was given. The texts to be consulted in this course included, strange to say, Kent’s Commentary on International Law and Wheaton’s Elements of International Law. It is possible that at this time instruction in international law was offered in the faculty of arts as well as in the law school. For example, in the examination for the gold medal in political economy the following question was asked: “Would abolition of tolls on the Welland Canada be a Free Trade or Protective measure? How does the Treaty of Washington affect the imposition of those tolls?” The second part of the question indicates that some reference to the law of treaties might have been made during the teaching of the course.

Committee I of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea is charged with responsibility for devising treaty provisions to govern the sea-bed and ocean floor beyond the limits of national jurisdiction, and in particular, for devising a regime for the management of the resources of this area. In addition, the committee has the task of preparing articles to provide for the equitable sharing by all states in the benefits derived from the international area, bearing in mind the special interests and needs of developing countries and having due regard to the rights and legitimate interests of states which may be affected by activities in the area. The committee is to be concerned, therefore, with the possible adverse effects on the economies of those developing countries which are land-based producers of the minerals likely to be derived from the international sea-bed area.

The second session of the Diplomatic Conference on the Reaffirmation and Development of International Humanitarian Law applicable to Armed Conflicts met in Geneva from February 3 until April 18, 1975. The purpose of this session of the Conference was the adoption — or perhaps more correctly the successful drafting — of two Protocols to be added to the Geneva Red Cross Conventions of 1949, in order to protect further the victims of international and non-international conflicts respectively; it was also to consider proposals directed to the humanization of methods of warfare, including the prohibition or restriction of conventional weapons considered to be purely indiscriminate or likely to cause an amount of suffering disproportionate to the purpose of the armed conflict.

The issues surrounding the legal status of Namibia and the numerous actions taken within the United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council relating to the revocation of the mandate of South Africa, are complex, and even the 1971 Opinion of the International Court of Justice has not simplified them. Much of the difficulty in determining the present juridical status of Namibia and the repository of sovereign authority over the territory revolves around the apparent inconsistencies between the 1950 Advisory Opinion of the Court and its 1971 Opinion. In this regard, the essential factor to be considered is the binding effect of the resolution of the General Assembly in 1966 that purported to terminate South Africa’s Mandate over Namibia.

The Fourth Annual Conference of the Canadian Council on International Law was held at the University of Ottawa on October 24 and 25, 1975. The theme of the Conference was the international law of development and three sessions dealt with the evolving law of development, development aid and trade, and development and foreign assistance.

The first session, chaired by Mr. Erik Wang, of the Department of External Affairs, began with a paper presented by Dr. Oscar Schachter, formerly Deputy Director of UNITAR and currently Professor of International Law at Columbia University. Dr. Schachter appropriately set the scene by responding to the question whether it is possible to speak of an international law of development.