1. Un nombre considérable d'états a accepté la juridiction obligatoire de la Cour internationale de Justice (C. I. J.), pour les différends et dans les conditions prévus à l'article 36, deuxième paragraphe, du Statut de la Cour, la soi-disant clause facultative. Toutefois, la plupart de ces états ont accepté cette juridiction avec certaines réserves. Parmi ces réserves, il y en a qui limitent l'application de la clause dans le temps, ratione temporis.

Legal assistance to the two Ad Hoc Tribunals1 is a prerequisite for their effective achievement. The obligation to provide the Tribunals with legal assistance has been outlined in the Security Council Resolutions establishing the Tribunals, the Statutes of the Tribunals, and their Rules of Procedure and Evidence.

Both the relationship between international and municipal law and fundamental rights are important themes of contemporary public law, and have been frequently discussed, among others by Professor Tammes, to whom these lines are devoted in gratitude. This is no reason, however, to consider these matters as closed. Both are still of current interest since they affect the very foundations of law. New developments give rise to new reflections. In law, man's freedom is constantly at stake. Breaches of fundamental rights are the order of the day. But also, and this may justify cautious optimism, these rights are no longer a merely national responsibility. Fundamental human rights, if anything, manifest the relationship between international and municipal law. They are no longer the basis of municipal law only, but also of international law. Fundamental rights occur in both spheres and therefore play a part in the problems of the relationship between them.

This article addresses the issue of whether the international criminal tribunals are under an obligation to fund family visits for indigent detainees. It examines the concept of positive obligations and its relation to the detention situation and describes the practice of funding family visits as it has developed at the International Criminal Court. It further analyses relevant developments in the Court's case law. It argues that the Court is indeed obliged to fund family visits. In this regard, the mere recognition of a detainee's right to family visits in the tribunals’ legal frameworks and in international soft-law penological standards can be said to inadequately reflect the particularities of international detention.

The landmark case of modern international law of economic warfare, Anderson v. N.V. Transandine Handelmaatschappij, dealing with the application of Royal Decree A 1 of May 24, 1940, was once more the subject of judicial consideration, after an interval of more than ten years, in State of the Netherlands v. Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Archimedes. It may briefly be recalled that the Royal Decree A 1 of the government-in-exile vested protective title in the State of the Netherlands to claims capable of being transferred outside the Realm in Europe and belonging to persons domiciled in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, for the purpose of conserving the rights of the former owners. It was this conservatory character of the Decree, as expressly stated in its art. 1(3), that militated against any confiscatory concept which might have prevented its extraterritorial application to assets located in the United States. Indeed, the conservatory character was stressed in all subsequent decisions which held Royal Decree A 1 applicable in the United States.

The quest for clear-cut legal structures in corporate bodies is not only propelled by dogmatic interest, but often also from shaken confidence and frustrated expectations. When in October 1985 a leading official of the International Tin Council, the manager of its buffer stock, declared that the Council was henceforward no longer able to meet its financial commitments and when subsequently no agreement on the settlement of outstanding claims could be reached, the Council's creditors as well as its members were faced with a host of legal issues for which the general rules of public international law provide no easily extricable guidance. In the face of the insolvency of an international organization the recourse to measures of liquidation as provided for in national company laws or the determination of the position of the organization's creditors vis-à-vis the member States cannot follow the broad path of consolidated State practice and legal doctrine.

La conception très répandue, voire mêrae classique, que Grotius est le père du Droit des Gens, n'a pas empêché la science de ce droit, tout en proclamant que Grotius est à sa base, de s'éloigner singulièrement de lui, et ceci au sujet de matières très importantes. Cette évolution de la science trouve sa contrepartie dans le fait que l'évolution du droit international lui-même semble obliger la science à retourner vers son fondateur.

The current litigation in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) over European restrictions on the importation, marketing and sale of genetically modified organisms gives rise to questions about the procedures through which international courts and tribunals may receive expert evidence from social science experts. The WTO Panel considering the EC – Biotech case received an amicus curiae brief from five social science experts who are highly qualified in precisely those fields of sociological research within which the most problematic aspects of the Biotech dispute are situated. The authors of the five-person brief themselves suggest that panels dealing with the subject of risk should contemplate formally appointing experts to assist them from disciplines additional to the natural sciences, and this suggestion merits serious broader consideration. International courts and tribunals’ handling of certain cases, such as those concerning risks to human health and the environment from new and modern technology, may stand to be improved through better access to state-of-the-art expertise on all aspects of risk and risk assessment.

The object of this article is to consider whether the ownership of expropriated property of aliens also passes to the expropriating state if the expropriation purporting to be nationalisation is not accompanied by compensation. It deals only with property (including enterprises) located within the territory of the nationalising state and belonging to aliens. The appropriation by governmental agencies of (enemy) property during or in connection with a war will not be discussed.