The Board of Editors of this review has asked us to write an essay on the recent developments in the relationship between the legislature and the judiciary in the Netherlands. We have gladly accepted this invitation because an analysis of these developments enables us to outline one of the most fundamental trends in the Dutch legal system during the last few years. We believe that this outline may be of interest to Dutch and foreign readers alike.

After the UN General Assembly had, on 14 December 1960, officially rung out the colonial era by adopting the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (Resolution 1514 (XV)) with a convincing majority (89 to 0 with 9 abstentions), the new States of the third world rapidly succeeded in pitting their numerical superiority in the General Assembly against the political and economic power of the industrialised world. This made it possible for the UN system – which dates back to 1945 and the structure of which the new States had not, or had hardly, been able to influence – to be adjusted to their specific needs, particularly in the vital fields of trade and industry. Thus, they contributed by their majority in the UN Assembly to the setting up in 1964 of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and in 1966 of the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) as organs of the General Assembly.

The scholarly contributions of C.C.A. Voskuil—Bert to his friends—include a number of publications devoted to various aspects of international civil procedure, a topic all too often neglected by conflicts scholars. He has paid special attention to jurisdictional issues, which furnished the topic for the doctoral thesis he presented thirty years ago. The honoree's emphasis on the procedural side of private international law reflects a commendable awareness of the implications jurisdictional and other adjective rules have in practice, and how they touch upon the theoretical foundations of our discipline. It therefore seems appropriate to discuss some of these implications in the Liber Amicorum dedicated to our Dutch friend and colleague.

In an article published in this Journal in 1962, entitled “Some Trends in the Political and Legal Thinking on the Conquest of Space”, the present writer endeavoured to examine whether in the statements and attitudes of statesmen and in the ideas and suggestions of international lawyers, the emergence of certain trends towards the ends and purposes of space exploration and the creation of some order in this new field of human activity, could be detected.

In recent years many countries have experienced acts of violence committed for political ends, which have been termed terrorist. Some such acts are committed entirely within one country with a view to affecting domestic policy in that country, as is the case with the much publicized activities of radical groups in Italy and West Germany; others have international implications. The country of commission may be a convenient stage for an act whose primary target is the government of another, as when Palestinians took Israeli athletes as hostages during the Munich Olympics in 1972. The action may be planned to involve other countries as well, perhaps with a view to influencing their relations with the country which is the terrorists primary target, as with the South Moluccans who have committed acts of violence in the Netherlands. Sometimes attacks are launched in one country from a base in another, as with the Palestinians' incursions into Israel. Whether the violence is national or international, the terrorists often seek and usually achieve dramatic publicity. Though the number of people physically affected may be small, the psychological impact may be considerable. Besides, these acts are seen as attempting to weaken the authority of a government, or a system of government. It is not surprising, then, that governments should wish to take, and to be seen to take, active steps to meet this challenge. The Council of Europe's Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism (hereafter the European Convention) is one of a number of recent attempts at international co-operation in fulfilment of this wish.

A state's denunciation of a treaty with the sole objective of re-acceding to it with a reservation may be interpreted as circumventing the prohibition of the late formulation of reservations enshrined in Article 19 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. This article addresses five cases where the denunciation of and re-accession to a treaty was at least considered by certain states and whose analysis promises to clarify the legal characteristics of this practice. One instance involved such a practice being discussed by the Swiss Federal Tribunal in the context of the amendment of the Swiss interpretative declaration to Article 6(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights. Another instance involved Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana with regard to the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. A further situation arose when in 2002 Sweden denounced and re-acceded to the Council of Europe Convention on the Reduction of Multiple Nationality and on Military Obligations in Cases of Multiple Nationality with the aim of excluding the obligations contained in Chapter I of this treaty. The last case analyzed in this article is Bolivia's denunciation of and re-accession to the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. The aim of this article is to offer a critical appraisal of this practice under international law. The article argues that the European states' position differs from the generality of states. In addition, states may include specific provisions on the possibility of denouncing and re-acceding with a reservation when they draft their treaties. States may review more systematically the treaty action and object to practices that are not compatible with the reserving states' good faith treaty obligations. And the ILC may include this topic into its work programme, for example, when updating the Guide to Practice on Reservations to Treaties.

In this contribution attention is paid to the development of private international law in the Netherlands. The establishment of the Hague Conference on Private International law in 1893 is taken as a starting point. The development of the Conference is roughly sketched. In 1910 the Netherlands Society of International Law was founded, the first national branch of the ILA. An overview is given of the Society's preliminary reports dealing with matters of private international law. The codification of PIL was the subject of the Society's annual meeting in 1990, where the importance of a step-by-step codification was emphasized. The development towards codification is discussed. Codification had already started in 1981 and would come to an end in 2009 with the introduction of the bill on Book 10 of the Dutch Civil Code. It may be expected that the bill will be adopted by Parliament in 2011. Attention is paid to this bill, which introduces the further codification and consolidation of the existing statutes on PIL and recombines them in Book 10 of the Civil Code.

Existing literature on the developing countries' experience with the WTO dispute settlement system (DSS) has paid scant attention to the participation issue of the least developed countries (LDCs), which currently form one-fifth of the WTO membership but constitute less than one per cent of participation in DSS. This article fills this gap by examining several dimensions of LDCs' participation. Upholding the significance of LDCs' participation it explores the challenges faced by LDCs at the pre-litigation, litigation and implementation stage emanating from power asymmetries, resource constraints and flawed DSS remedies. The article particularly looks into the nature of LDCs' participation, which is mostly in the category of third parties. In doing so, it evaluates the third-party participation of Benin and Chad in US – Upland Cotton to ascertain whether third-party participation could be an alternative for LDCs to participate as co-complainants. It analyzes the special and differential treatment provisions of the DSU to further scrutinize whether these provisions and the way they are interpreted and applied in the WTO Panel Reports and the Appellate Body Reports are facilitative for LDCs' participation. Finally, the article makes recommendations to address the challenges on the part of LDCs and to reform DSS so as to make it effective for LDCs' participation.

Originally it was suggested that I write about ‘rusty’ treaties – by which was meant ‘old’ treaties that have not been terminated – and their continued relevance in view of the principle of rebus sic stantibus, now enshrined in Article 62 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties 1969. I did not relish that. There would be problems of definition: when can a treaty be said to be ‘old’? Also, I remain sceptical about the usefulness of the fundamental change principle, being of the view that it is of little real importance. Although invoked many times, so far no international tribunal has applied it. The editors therefore kindly agreed that I could instead write about treaties of a universal character, in that they are open to universal participation, but which are ‘limping’.

The recent events in East Timor and Kosovo have demonstrated clearly that human brutality and wanton behaviour are not elements which are exclusive to the African continent, but rather they are manifestations of the human condition. However, it is fair to say that Africa has had more than its fair share. In particular, the African continent has recently had states which have experienced anarchy to levels where the state has either collapsed completely or has become dysfunctional.

After 30 years of negotiations, the Rhine river is still very polluted. Although the concentration of some pollutants has diminished during the past few years, the quantity of other harmful substances is still increasing. This lack of progress can be explained to a large extent by a set of peculiar circumstances which seems to be unique for the Rhine. The most important of these circumstances is the international dimension of the situation. The main stem of the Rhine flows through the sovereign territories of Switzerland, the Federal Republic of Germany, France and the Netherlands. Its drainage area, moreover, also covers Italy, Austria, Luxemburg and Belgium. Obviously, no anti-pollution policy can hope to be effective until at least the most directly concerned of these eight States have reached agreement on common objectives and common measures. Reaching agreement, however, is complicated by the problem of conflicting uses which may be more intricate for the Rhine than for any other international river.

Of all the four Conventions the second Convention conforms most nearly with existing customary law and its contents are, at the same time, the most varied of them all. They comprise, in fact, all the traditional solutions to the various problems to which the regime of the high seas has, through the centuries, given rise. They almost form an extract from the many textbooks of public international law dealing with the high seas and there is hardly an element of surprise or novelty in them.

In George H. Sabine's great work, A History of Political Thought, he makes the following overall judgment on Grotius’ writing:

“Grotius' importance in the history of jurisprudence rests not upon a theory of the state or upon anything that he had to say about constitutional law, but upon his conception of a law regulating the relations between the sovereign states.”

The attempt to establish a New International Economic Order (NIEO) during the 1970s was an acrimonious period in international diplomacy and quite clearly failed, in retrospect, to achieve anything like the substantive change envisaged. This article considers one non-governmental attempt to move the debate forward, the 1986 International Law Association (ILA) Declaration on Progressive Development of Principles of Public International Law relating to a New International Economic Order. The article revisits the 1986 Seoul Declaration and considers to what extent its principles of international law remain valid for an economic system that has changed dramatically over the last twenty years. The article concludes that not only is the Seoul Declaration remarkably apposite to the current situation, but it has been re-energised by the emergence of the notion of sustainable development, itself a major topic within the International Law Association. In that sense, the Seoul principles – as now supplemented by the 2002 ILA New Delhi Declaration of Principles of International Law relating to Sustainable Development – remain foundational not only to the functioning of an equitable economic system but also, in the light of changing expectations, a sustainable international community, more generally.

At the present time, the world commodity trade is primarily carried by ships. Merchant fleet and fishing vessels of 10,000 gross tonnage of more than thirty nations sail in and out of the port areas throughout the world carrying passengers and cargoes including inflammable gas and pollutant chemicals. The rapidly increasing intensity of traffic, the size of vessels, the speed of container and other ships, the growing danger of collision, loss of life and pollution underscores an important need for improved maritime communication.

Le sujet que la présente étude se propose de rechercher ne constitue au point de vue doctrinal qu'un aspect du problème plus vaste de l'immunité des Etats étrangers en général. Vu la connexité étroite entre notre sujet et ce problème, la nécessité de jeter un coup d'œil sur les courants qui se manifestent en cette matière dans la doctrine contemporaine s'impose.

Le 28 septembre 1955 la Commission Permanente de Conciliation franco-suisse s'est réunie au Palais de la Paix. Elle a été convoquée pour examiner deux différends qui se sont élevés entre la Confédération suisse d'une part et la République française de l'autre, et pour s'efforcer de concilier les Parties.