The United States at the dawn of the twentieth century was just beginning to comprehend the influence it could have on the international scene. It had no desire to become involved in the European power politics that had produced, in the lifetimes of many Americans then living, the Crimean War, the Franco-Prussian War and the essentially European Boer War in South Africa. Nevertheless, a distinct strain of expansionism could be found in American foreign policy. The belief was stirring in those concerned to establish a nonviolent world order that the interaction of nation-states would benefit from exposure to American values, American economic dynamism and the lessons to be drawn from the American federal experience. This belief, combined with a deep aversion to what was seen as essentially a European proclivity for settling disputes by resort to war, motivated some of the more influential participants in the American peace movement. That movement, in turn, gave birth to the American Society of International Law.

It is now conventional wisdom that the proliferation of ethnic-based violence constitutes the greatest threat to public order and human rights since the lifting of the Iron Curtain. The eruption of hatreds, whether suppressed or ignored for a half century or newly arisen, has unleashed centrifugal forces that are pulling states apart from Africa to Europe to South and Central Asia. To date, the response of the effective decision makers in the international community has been ambiguous and inconstant: the United Nations member states reiterate the importance of the unity of all states, but they accept accomplished breakups after the fact, all the while insisting on the protection of minorities within states. Political philosophers struggle with the circumstances under which secession and dissolution are desirable; international law declares the lack of either a blanket right to, or prohibition against, secession and seemingly relegates its achievement to a pure power calculus.

Rules of origin are the criteria used to determine the nationality of a product. They are essential to implementing discriminatory trade policies, compiling economic statistics on trade flows, and marking a product with its country of origin. Rules of origin were easy-to-apply, uncontroversial tools of international trade as long as the parts of a product were manufactured and assembled primarily in one country and other effective protectionist mechanisms could be used.

On June 27, 1996, the Senate voted its advice and consent to ratification of the Agreement for the Implementation of the Provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982 Relating to the Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks, with Annexes, adopted at New York on August 4, 1995, by consensus of the UN Conference on Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Stocks, and signed by the United States on December 4, 1995, subject to one declaration, which read as follows:

Petitioners Marjorie Zicherman and Muriel Mahalek sought damages from respondent Korean Air Lines (KAL) under the Warsaw Convention governing international air transport, for loss of society of a family member killed aboard a commercial airliner downed by a Soviet warplane. In a cross-petition, KAL requested a determination that the Death on the High Seas Act (DOHSA) prescribed damages recoverable under the Convention and did not allow damages to be recovered for loss of society. The Supreme Court (per Scalia, J.) affirmed in part and remanded in part and held unanimously that the Convention did not permit family members to recover loss-of-society damages because (1) Article 17 of the Convention provides for carrier liability in passenger deaths or injuries but leaves the crucial definition of legally cognizable harm to be determined by domestic courts; (2) in the United States, DOHSA prescribes the substantive law covering air crashes on the high seas; and (3) DOHSA permits only pecuniary damages.

In a suit brought by Bosnian nationals against Radovan Karadzic, die U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that, under the Alien Tort Claims Act, a U.S. district court may exercise jurisdiction over a nonstate actor accused of committing genocide or war crimes in violation of international law. Relying on various international agreements, including the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and common Article 3 of the four Geneva Conventions, the court found that, under modern international law, genocide and war crimes are universally condemned regardless of whether the perpetrator is die agent of a state or an independent, nonstate actor. However, the court declined to extend its holding beyond these two categories of international law violations, finding that no similar consensus exists widi respect to more commonplace violations such as torture and summary execution; the current state of international law with respect to these acts concerns state actors only, according to die court.

Opinion 2/94, Accession of the Community to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. 17 Hum. Rts. L.J. 51 (1996).

European Court of Justice, March 28, 1996.

On April 26, 1995, die Council of the European Union requested an opinion on whether accession of the European Community to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) was compatible with the Treaty Establishing the European Community (Treaty). In its request, the Council of the European Union stated that no decision on opening negotiations could be taken before the Court pronounced on die compatibility of accession with the Treaty. The Council argued that, even though a text of the envisaged agreement did not yet exist, the legal issues regarding accession were sufficientiy clear for the Court to provide an advisory opinion. The Council made clear that accession should not have any effect on the reservations entered by member states, which would “continue to apply in the areas falling within national jurisdiction.” It also explained that the “Community would agree to submit to the machinery for individual petitions and inter-State applications; actions between the Community and its Member States would, however, have to be excluded in recognition of the monopoly conferred in such matters by Art. 219 of the EC Treaty on the Court of Justice.”

United States—Standards for Reformulated and Conventional Gasoline. 35ILM 603 (1996).

World Trade Organization Appellate Body, April 29, 1996.

In United States—Standards for Reformulated and Conventional Gasoline (Gasoline), the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization Dispute Settlement Body in its first decision addressed one of the most difficult contemporary issues in international trade— the tension between the growth of international trade and the protection of the global environment. The Appellate Body decided that rules regarding standards for cleanliness of gasoline (Gasoline Rule) adopted under the Clean Air Act by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which required importers of gasoline to meet different standards from those required of domestic refiners, were not justifiable restrictions on trade under the environmental exceptions of Article XX of GATT 1994 (GATT).

Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 permits the United States Trade Representative (USTR) to investigate and impose sanctions on countries whose trade practices are found to be unfair to U.S. interests. It reaches beyond the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), to give the United States unilateral power to penalize countries that threaten American interests. Section 301 can be used to enforce United States rights under multilateral and bilateral trade agreements, as well as to remedy unreasonable, unjustifiable or discriminatory foreign trade practices that restrict or burden U.S. trade. It contains both mandatory and discretionary provisions and specific timetables for action by the USTR.