The international dimensions of terrorism had been identified prior to World War II. Nonetheless, no agreement could be reached on an acceptable definition, or appropriate action, and the 1937 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Terrorism, adopted by the League of Nations, was ratified by a single country. The issue resurfaced in the late 1950s when private individuals perpetrated an alarming number of incidents endangering civil aviation during transnational flights. These incidents led to the adoption of three distinct conventions on the subject, namely the 1963 Tokyo Convention on Offenses and Certain Other Acts Committed on Board Aircraft, the 1970 Hague Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft, and the 1971 Montreal Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Civil Aviation.

The generally accepted view that the three-mile limit originated from the cannon-shot rule, has recently been challenged by Mr. Wyndham Walker in an article on “Territorial Waters: the Cannon Shot Rule.”

What did the United States Supreme Court mean when it famously said, “International law is part of our law, and must be ascertained and administered by the courts of justice of appropriate jurisdiction, as often as questions of right depending upon it are duly presented for their determination”? Perhaps the Court was suggesting that, in an interdependent world, United States courts should not decide cases without paying “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind,” in the memorable words of the Declaration of Independence. The framers and early Justices understood that the global legitimacy of a fledgling nation crucially depended upon the compatibility of its domestic law with the rules of the international system within which it sought acceptance. Their recognition seems both prudent and sensible. Even today, for any nation consciously to ignore global standards not only would ensure constant frictions with the rest of the world, but also would diminish that nation's ability to invoke those international rules that served its own national purposes.

The human rights movement, which has had such a powerful impact on international law and relations in the post—World War II period, has in recent years turned its attention to extradition. Treaties, executive acts and judicial decisions on extradition have all been affected. At the same time, transnational and international crime has increased. The international community has responded by creating new institutions and expanding the network of bilateral and multilateral treaties designed to outlaw transnational crime, promote extradition, and authorize mutual assistance. Inevitably, there is a tension between the claim for the inclusion of human rights in the extradition process and the demand for more effective international cooperation in the suppression of crime, which resembles the tension in many national legal systems between the “law and order” and human rights approaches to criminal justice. As in domestic society, it is necessary to strike a balance between the two so as to establish a system in which crime is suppressed and human rights are respected. This was stressed by the European Court of Human Rights in the leading case on extradition and human rights, Soering v. United Kingdom, when it stated:

In the April, 1926 number of this Journal, Professor Quincy Wright remarks, apropos of the Damascus bombardment:

At long last, the people of Iraq are freed from the brutality of Saddam Hussein. The swift success of the coalition’s military campaign has been followed by predictable difficulties in organizing a hew government, restoring an economy, rebuilding civic society, and quelling violence from remnants of the old regime. But these challenges are kept in scale by recalling a dictator who murdered three hundred thousand fellow citizens. Saddam chose weapons of mass destruction as the central symbol of his domestic and international swagger—using the same internal security apparatus to parry United Nations inspectors and to extinguish domestic political dissent. Removing Iraq’s Ba’athist regime has ended a looming danger to regional neighbors, including Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The crucial hopes for Middle East peace may also be enhanced by the change. And a new government in Baghdad lessens the chance that weapons matériel will be transferred to ill-intentioned nonstate actors.

Commentators on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) note that cases of noncompliance with final judgments are very rare. The ICJ registrar Philippe Couvreur, however, recognized that compliance is often hard to determine because judgments are varied, declarations may not reflect actual conduct, effects may only become apparent long after the judgment is given, and the legal or political situation may substantially change after the judgment. In this vein, Judge Jennings asked:

The traditional system of international law is based on the distinction between the law of peace and the law of war. In the formative period of international law, thinkers were fully aware of the problems hidden behind this classification. Positivist writers took over these conceptions, framed against the background of a philosophical vista of society. Yet in their hands these terms lost their original significance. It is the purpose of this investigation to throw light on this process and to consider the relevance of this dichotomy into peace and war for the positivist and sociological approaches to international law.

In courts and tribunals, political arenas like the United Nations Security Council, and popular and scholarly journals, discursive recourse to the principle of proportionality has become frequent and vehement. It tends most audibly to arise in the midst of military conflicts pitting states against each other. But it also emerges in interstate trade disputes and when states, seeking to protect national security or public health, restrict internationally protected human rights.

In September 2010, President Jakob Kellenberger of the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) summarized the conclusions of a two-year, internal ICRC study of changes that have occurred in the nature of armed conflict since the signing of the Geneva Conventions in 1949, and he also suggested how international humanitarian law (IHL) should respond to those changes. In a previous address marking the sixtieth anniversary of the Geneva Conventions, Kellenberger had observed that in the place of traditional conflicts between state-sponsored armies on a battlefield, modern conflicts frequently involve nonstate actors, such as terrorist groups—a development that has blurred the line between civilians and combatants, and created challenges for IHL. The ICRC study concluded that IHL generally provides a suitable legal framework for regulating armed conflict.

International tribunals confront a “Judicial Trilemma.” More specifically the states that design, and the judges that serve on, international courts face an interlocking series of tradeoffs among three core values: (1) judicial independence, the freedom of judges to decide cases on the facts and the law; (2) judicial accountability, structural checks on judicial authority found most prominently in international courts in reappointment and reelection processes; and (3) judicial transparency, mechanisms that permit the identification of individual judicial positions (such as through individual opinions and dissents). The Trilemma is that it is possible to maximize, at most, two of these three values. Drawing on interviews with current and former judges at leading international courts, this article unpacks the logic underlying the Judicial Trilemma, and traces the varied ways in which this logic manifests itself in the design and operation of the International Court of Justice, European Court of Human Rights, Court of Justice of the European Union, and the World Trade Organization's Appellate Body. The Judicial Trilemma does not identify an “ideal” court design. Rather it provides a framework that enables international actors to understand the inevitable tradeoffs that international courts confront, and thereby helps to ensure that these tradeoffs are made deliberately and with a richer appreciation of their implications.

Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. marks the second time in nine years that the Supreme Court has ruled unanimously that the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) does not provide jurisdiction in a high-profile human rights case, a sequence that might suggest an end to the gilded age of human rights litigation that began with Filártiga v. Peña-Irala. On closer analysis, however, Kiobel, like Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain before it, adopts a rhetoric of caution without foreclosing litigation that fits the Filártiga model. To the contrary, Sosa and Kiobel invite considerably more ATS litigation than they resolve or bar and therefore confirm Justice Antonin Scalia’s memorable encapsulation of the Court’s “Never Say Never Jurisprudence.” All four of the opinions in Kiobel confirm that multiple significant issues remain for future resolution, but it is unrealistic to expect answers on the basis of the Court’s decision because what is law in Kiobel isnt clear and what is clear in Kiobel isn’t law.

The Russian Federation, by a municipal law act dated March 21, 2014, annexed Crimea, an area of Ukraine. This act followed armed intervention by forces of the Russian Federation, a referendum, and a declaration of independence in Crimea. Outside the context of decolonization, few claims of annexation following the use of force have been made during the United Nations era; this is the first by a permanent member of the Security Council against a United Nations member. The present article examines the annexation of Crimea in view of the legal arguments that the Russian Federation has articulated in defense of its actions. It then considers the international response and the possible consequences of nonrecognition.

The development of the articles on state responsibility of the International Law Commission (ILC) has been described elsewhere, in particular in the ILC’s Yearbook. The phases of development of the first (1955-1996) andsecond (1998-2001) readings are well enough known, and there is little point in repeating this material. Whatever the trials and longueurs of their production, the articles with their commentaries now exist and may be assessed as a whole.

The first reading was the product of decades of work under successive special rapporteurs (Roberto Ago, Willem Riphagen, and Gaetano Arangio-Ruiz). The second readingwas equally a collective process and many members contributed to the final result. As I was formally responsible for shaping the work on second reading, I may not be the best person to comment on the outcome. Anything less than a full-scale defense of the text will be seen as an unauthorized retreat, and if the text cannot defend itself with the aid of the commentaries, it is too late for individuals to make up for any deficiencies.

Just over sixty years ago, the international community, seeking to heal the wounds of a brutal war, embarked on a bold legal experiment. For the first time in history, legal mechanisms were invoked to bring to justice the perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity in international tribunals specifically established for that purpose. The trials at Nuremberg and Tokyo were extraordinary and risky; and, above all, unique in their time.