The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea is a fact. It exists. Whether or not it becomes a fully operational treaty-signed, ratified, in force, widely supported, generally followed-it is and will be the cause of significant effects. Its very existence modifies political, economic, and legal relationships in countless ways whose direction and intensity we can predict only in a most speculative way. What we can say in advance is that the effect of the Convention— its own fate as a treaty and its impact on international relations— will substantially depend on how it is perceived.

Recognition of governments serves three functions in the international legal system: ensuring that only regimes clearly deserving such status are accepted as governments of states, assuring new governments that others will respect their status, and informing courts, government agencies, and nationals of recognizing states that a particular regime is in fact the government of another state. Lately, some statesmen and a respectable number of legal scholars have come to view recognition of governments as causing more difficulties than it is worth as it is now used. In particular, they suspect that decisions whether to recognize a new regime often depend more on its character or policy than on its ability to meet the objective test of effectively ruling its state, and they believe that current doctrine on the effects of recognition or nonrecognition creates unnecessary confusion.

Multilateral treaty making, sometimes called the "international legislative process", occurs in a variety of forms and under the auspices of many international organizations. Concern that insufficient information is available about the way treaties are negotiated in different forums and that the process is haphazard led to a proposal for its review in the Sixth Committee at the 32d session of the United Nations General Assembly. Acting upon.this initiative, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 32/48, which called upon the Secretary- General to report on the techniques and procedures used in the elaboration of multilateral treaties. In order to assist in the preparation of this report, comments were requested from states, specialized agencies and other intergovernmental organizations, and the offices of the United Nations.

The July 1982 issue of this Journal (pp. 532-54) published an article written by Professor Mohamed ElBaradei, The Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty and Access to the GulfofAqaba: A New Legal Regime, in which he gives a contextual interpretation and evaluation of the regime laid down by Article V(2) of the Treaty of Peace. Article V(2) reads:

Syndicat Unique des Vignerons de l’Aude. 1981 Revue Trimestrielle de Droit Européen 363.

Conseil d’Etat (Litigation Section, 2d and 6th Subsections), June 21, 1981.

According to the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Communities, EEC Council regulations are directly applicable in the courts of the member states, and domestic legislation duplicating or reenacting such regulations are without effect and may be illegal. The instant case presents an interesting application of that rule by the French Conseil d’Etat.