On the night of Sunday 27—Monday 28 April 1958, the curtain fell on a diplomatic performance on the Geneva scene which had lasted for nine weeks: the Conference on the Law of the Sea. Driving back to the hotel from the Palais des Nations one could not help comparing the result of this Conference held under the aegis of the United Nations with the corresponding section of its predecessor of 1930 at The Hague, organised by the League of Nations, and being struck by two parallels and two differences. The two Conferences had in common that they had both been thoroughly prepared legally, and that it proved impossible to reach any agreement on one of the fundamental questions discussed, viz. the breadth of the territorial sea. But they differed in that, as far as the law of the sea was concerned, the Geneva Conference covered a much wider field than that of The Hague as it dealt not only with the territorial sea but also with the high seas and the continental shelf, and that they drew different conclusions from their failure to reach agreement on the breadth of the territorial sea, because while the Conference of 1930 ended with no convention at all concerning this subject, its successor of 1958 adopted one in spite of the important gaps left. The Conference of 1958 was moreover attended by a much larger number of States.

The Republic of Rwanda is part of the African Great Lakes Region. The region straddles the east-central part of Africa. A chain of lakes is found in the region, ranging from Lakes Victoria, Albert, Edward, Kivu and Tanganyika; hence the name African Great Lakes Region. It covers the countries of Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. The region's relief is moderate and influenced by tectonic and volcanic activity. Parts of the region are heavily forested, as is the case with the Congo-basin, while the others in the east are grassland savannahs. The volcanic soil in parts of the region makes it ideal for agriculture and therefore conducive to human habitation. Indeed parts of the region, particularly Burundi and Rwanda, have high population densities and a concomitant problem of land shortage. Besides the rich arable soil the countries of this region are also well endowed with a variety of precious mineral resources, such as gold, diamonds, uranium, copper, emeralds and cobalt.

The author of the aiticle “On limitation of shipowners' liability”, published in volume X, pp. 139–155 and 239–255, asked us to insert the following remarks:

p. 139, 11th line from above: “ad referendum” to be omitted;

p. 148, 4th line from below: “The convention was signed on October 10, 1957 by 18 countries, of which 4 ad referendum (Brazil, Israel, Portugal and Spain)”. In footnote 31 “Portugal” has been omitted;

p. 254, note 81, 15th line from above: the following words are to be inserted behind “Court of Cass.”: 1927, N.J. 1927, 1259; C.A. The Hague, 1934, N.J. 1937, no. 108, aff. Court Rotterdam; Court of Cass.”.

The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is founded upon certain values and institutions common to the legal systems of all the Contracting States. In the absence of such common values and institutions the attempt to create generally applicable guidelines for the balancing of the rights of individuals against the general interest will run into difficulties.

On 19 December 1978 the Dutch Government was informally requested by the UN Secretary-General to provide an infantry battalion for the UN peace-keeping force in Lebanon within the shortest possible time. France had decided to remove about half its UNIFIL contingent. On 12 January 1979 the Dutch Cabinet decided to inform the Secretary-General that, should he make an official request, the Government was willing to give a positive response.

It was these events that gave rise to a sequence of not less than five judicial decisions on the question whether conscripts could be posted to the Lebanon without their consent. Answering this question involved aspects of municipal as well as international law.

The survey is accompanied with the author's comments if necessary.

In the modern law of obligations the protection of consumers is a phenomenon that is gaining ever increasing importance. It has also penetrated the realm of private international law (p.i.l.). Rules on the subject primarily deal with obligations arising out of contract; in this field specific p.i.l. rules envisage contracts concluded by consumers. In the field of non-contractual obligations no such specific rules have been framed as yet. However p.i.1. rules relating to products liability, although as a rule not limited to consumers but also including non-consumers, largely affect the first-mentioned class of persons and cannot be neglected in a paper dealing with consumer protection. In the present paper, therefore, attention will be focussed on p.i.l. rules relating to consumer contracts, and this will be followed by a brief account of p.i.l. rules on products liability as far as these are of importance for the protection of consumers.

Sedert het arrest van de Hoge Raad in de zaak Solbandera is het niet meer twijfelachtig dat de Hoge Raad het recht van partijen erkent om bij internationale overeenkomsten zelf het toepasselijke recht aan te wijzen. Naar mijn mening had de Hoge Raad de autonomie van partijen ook reeds erkend bij zijn arrest inzake de treuer Nicolaas, maar Hijmans, van Brakel, Schölten en A. van Oven hebben dit betwist. Geheel onbegrijpelijk was deze mening niet, daar de overwegingen van de Hoge Raad in dit arrest wel ruimte laten voor enige twijfel.

This article first examines the entire range of agency relationships between an international organisation, acting as a principal, and one or more states, acting as its agent(s). It is here argued that an agency relationship between an international organisation and one or more state(s) can be established by the constitutive treaty of the organisation, or ad hoc. In particular, an ad hoc agency relationship results from a state placing one of its organs at the disposal of an international organisation and under its effective control, with the purpose of carrying out functions of that organisation.

The article then examines the consequences for the responsibility of the organisation and the relevant state(s) of an agency relationship between an international organisation acting as a principal and one or more states acting as its agent(s). It is demonstrated that an international organisation may be responsible for damage caused by the conduct of the state. Furthermore, it is argued that the state itself may bear responsibility for having established or for not having terminated the agency relationship if it commits wrongful conduct on behalf of the international organisation.

It often happens in the history of law, that a certain event gives the impulse to a new direction of legal thinking. Though the technical developments of our age continually confront us with new problems, which demand special provisions also in the legal field, the urgency of such provisions is often felt only after some dramatic accident, which arouses public alarm in wide circles.

The movement for development of private international law in the Americas through multilateral conventions (which is referred to below as the Inter-American Conventional Movement) began in 1878; and the great influence which the European school of legal thought has exerted on it can be perceived throughout its history. It was in the Americas that one of the decisive steps in the world-wide trend towards the development of private international law through conventions took place, and it is there that the considerable influence of the Hague Conference on this subject can be traced to its origin. Legal thought on a global scale is becoming universal and thus the ideas of the Dutch scholar Jitta, expressed at the end of the last century, that the State must respect the individuals forming part of a universal society and that to achieve this end, the State itself must find homogeneous solutions through treaties, are now a reality. In order to try to give an overall view of this movement in private international law in the Americas, section 2 will deal briefly with the development of the three historical stages, which, in my opinion, are the most significant, after which section 3 will deal with the fourth or current stage, following which section 4 will end with some brief concluding remarks.

Bellekom: The speaker referred to the two pillars of the conception of Meuwissen: 1. fundamental freedoms contain a constitutive element; they do not say only what is, but also what ought to be: 2. fundamental freedoms are an expression of values. The latter element can also be found in German literature, where the Constitution (containing within it fundamental freedoms and human rights) is referred to as a “Wertordnung” (order of values). Fundamental freedoms are, according to that theory, values, along with others, that can be brought to bear in a concrete case. The danger of this idea is that this “Wertordnung” will amount to an order of vested interests, one that preserves existing social-economic structures and limits the possibilities for minorities. In order to show that this danger is not an imaginary one, he referred to matters such as the “Berufsverbot” (exclusion from public service) and the exclusion of lawyers from- the defence in Germany. In those very cases an appeal was made, by way of justifying those practices, to the “freiheitlich-demokratische” (liberal-democratic) value of the Constitution, a value that is assumed to be a basic element of the Constitution, a value that outweighs even fundamental rights such as equal eligibility for the public service and the right to defend oneself through legal assistance of one's own choice.

The Rock of Gibraltar has long been a bone of contention between Spain and the United Kingdom. Talks undertaken in Lisbon in April 1980 between the two countries on the problem of Gibraltar had however, given rise to hopes that normal relations would soon be restored between Gibraltar and Spain, that is, until the Falklands Conflict led to the indefinite postponement of negotiations in June 1982. Matters have progressed only imperceptibly since.