One of the principal issues of interest to international lawyers in the International Tin Council cases decided by the English courts was whether member states of the International Tin Council (ITC) were secondarily or concurrently liable to third parties for the debts of the organization. This issue may arise when two or more states form an organization with legal personality that can perform functions with legal consequences. In the course of performing these functions, such an organization may incur liabilities to third parties. These third parties may be states, other organizations, individuals or legal persons. The states may be member states of the organization itself or other states, and the individuals and legal persons may be nationals of member states or not. The liabilities may emanate from transactions, such as international agreements between states and the organization, that take place at the international level and may be governed by international law; or they may stem from transactions governed by municipal law, whether between the organization and states, individuals or legal persons. Such liabilities may be contractual, quasi-contractual or delictual.

The law governing the admission of reservations to treaties has evolved over the past sixty years, as is demonstrated by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which incorporates a regime on reservations that represents a significant change in the law as it was generally understood in the first part of this century. Whereas it was once widely considered that the unanimous consent of the other parties to a treaty was required to admit a reservation, the Vienna Convention implemented a new system in which this condition is generally not necessary. The regime on reservations is contained in section 2 of the Convention (Articles 19-23), which, together with the definitional article (Article 2(1)(d)), determines what constitutes a reservation, the criteria it must meet to be permissible, and the effect it will have, both in the event that it is accepted by other contracting states and in the more problematic event that it is not.

An “exclusive preserve” of a state in the UN Secretariat is a post that is continuously filled by nationals of the same state. Virtually from the founding of the United Nations, the Secretariat has observed an “unofficial” practice of exclusive preserves for many senior posts held by nationals of several influential states, including the United States; but its most persistent advocate, and with regard to a particularly wide range of posts, has been the Soviet Union. In view of the past underrepresentation of Soviet nationals in the Secretariat, largely because the Soviet Government insisted that its nationals be recruited only on fixed-term contracts based on secondment from the Government and Soviet institutions, a considerable number of posts were set aside to be filled on a replacement basis. The occupants of those posts were selected by the Secretary-General from a very short list of candidates submitted by the Soviet Government. The object of this Editorial is to assess the impact of the new Soviet policy toward the UN Secretariat, recent General Assembly resolutions and the jurisprudence of the United Nations Administrative Tribunal on the practice of exclusive preserves.

Leland Goodrich, a foremost authority on the United Nations, died in New York on November 16, 1990. His many books and articles on the United Nations have enlightened students, diplomats and officials for more than four decades. They exemplify meticulous scholarship and a deep understanding of practical ways and means in the world of international politics.

The material in this section is arranged according to the system employed in the annual Digest of United States Practice in International Law, published by the Department of State.

The dispute arose out of a 1985 settlement of litigation between Vincente Chuidian, a Philippine national, and the Philippine Export and Foreign Loan Guarantee Corporation (Guarantee Corporation). As part of the settlement, the state-owned Philippine National Bank (Bank) issued a letter of credit to Chuidian on behalf of the Guarantee Corporation. After the Government of President Aquino took office in 1986, the Presidential Commission on Good Government (Commission) was formed and “charged with recovering ‘ill-gotten wealth’ accumulated by Marcos and his associates.” The Commission was authorized to enjoin acts that might frustrate its efforts. Raul Daza, a member of the Commission, instructed the Bank not to pay on the letter of credit issued to Chuidian, claiming that the Commission suspected that the settlement had been fraudulently entered into to prevent the revelation of facts concerning Marcos’s involvement in Chuidian’s business enterprises.

This case is the latest in a series of actions brought in the United States since 1984 that have resulted in court and administrative decisions on the claim of asylum by, and attempt at extradition of, the plaintiff, Joseph Patrick Doherty, a native of Northern Ireland and subject of the United Kingdom and its Colonies. He was admittedly a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army and was convicted in absentia, in Northern Ireland, of murder of a British Army officer there in 1980. In the instant case, the plaintiff sought review by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit of two administrative decisions by successive Attorneys General of the United States (one by Edwin Meese in June 1988, and the other by Richard Thornburgh in July 1989).

Maria Kowalska, a former administrative officer of the City of Hamburg, requested payment of an extra allowance on the occasion of her retirement. The Collective Agreement for Federal Employees (Agreement) prescribed such allowanees for full-time employees only. Ms. Kowalska was a part-time employee and was therefore not entitled to the extra allowance according to the Agreement. The questions the Labor Court Hamburg referred to the Court of Justice of the European Communities were: (1) whether a collective bargaining agreement provision excluding part-time employees from certain allowances violates Article 119 of the Treaty Establishing the European Communities (equal pay for men and women), part-time employees being mostly female; and (2) if there is discrimination incompatible with EEC law, do part-time employees have a right to extra allowances proportionate to their working hours on the basis of Articles 119 and 117 (improvement and harmonization of workers’ conditions) and Council Directive 75/117 on equal pay for men and women, notwithstanding the provision to the contrary in the Agreement, or do freedom and autonomy in collective bargaining preclude such a right?

The judgment of the Supreme Court of Colombia, rendered upon the petition by a citizen to declare Law 20 of 1974, approving the concordat between the Holy See and Colombia, to be unconstitutional, deals with one of the most controversial aspects of the interface between international law and constitutional law under many modern constitutions. In most contemporary constitutional systems, the conclusion of international agreements requires parliamentary participation. In the United States only one house—the Senate—must give its advice and consent, but in the majority of states with bicameral systems, including Colombia, the approval must be given by both houses, usually in the form of a statute, the so-called ratification law. According to Article 120, subsection 20, of the Constitution of Colombia,

In October 1988 the American Branch of the International Law Association and the American Society of International Law established a Joint Committee on the Role of the Legal Adviser of the Department of State. The Committee’s charge was to examine the role of the Legal Adviser in encouraging respect for international law in the U.S. government decisionmaking process, and to make suggestions and recommendations to enhance the Legal Adviser’s effectiveness in this regard. The thirty-four members of the Committee included nine former Legal Advisers, a former President’s counsel, other past and present U.S. government officials, academics and private attorneys. Collectively, the Committee reflected broad experience and a variety of perspectives as regards issues of U.S. foreign policy and international law. (The members of the Committee are listed in footnote 1.)

On October 29 and 30, 1990, a meeting was held of the heads of the offices responsible for international legal services of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of the member states of the United Nations—the Legal Advisers. The meeting was organized at the invitation of the Legal Advisers of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of Canada, India, Mexico, Poland and Sweden, and with the assistance of the Legal Counsel of the United Nations, Under-Secretary-General Carl-August Fleischhauer. Some twenty-five Legal Advisers and thirty-two of their deputies or other representatives attended, including all five colleagues representing the permanent members of the Security Council.

On September 25, 1990, Poland deposited a declaration with the Secretary-General of the United Nations accepting the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice in accordance with Article 36, paragraph 2 of the Statute of the Court. It is the first country from Central or Eastern Europe to have done so and the fifty-second state now maintaining an effective declaration.

The readers of this Journal are familiar with the difficulties experienced in protecting human dignity in situations of internal violence that fall below the thresholds of applicability of international humanitarian instruments but within the margin of public emergency; the governments directly concerned often promote this interpretation of such situations, enabling them to invoke the derogations clauses of international human rights instruments. These difficulties are compounded by the inadequacy of the nonderogable provisions of human rights instruments, the weakness of international monitoring and control procedures, and the need to define the character of the conflict situations (the applicability of certain norms of humanitarian law depends on such characterization, which is usually difficult and contested). Experience indicates that in situations of internal violence, normal constitutional and other legal checks and balances are singularly ineffective. Efforts have already been made to address some of the abuses typical of these situations, but the abuses continue unabated.

On October 30, 1984, French divers located the wreck of the CSS Alabama in 180 feet of water about seven miles off the Normandy coast of Cherbourg. A Confederate raider, the Alabama sank after a battle with the USS Kearsarge on June 19, 1864. French researchers dove to the wreck in November 1987.

Dispatch, a new weekly record of the U.S. Department of State, compiles major foreign policy speeches and congressional testimony by senior U.S. officials, as well as treaty actions and ambassadorial appointments.

Every week, Dispatch publishes the most current information on U.S. foreign policy. In addition to speeches and congressional testimony, Dispatch carries policy summaries, fact sheets and feature articles, plus updates on events in the Middle East and on public and private sector assistance to Eastern and Central Europe.

We are pleased to report that, on February 7, 1991, the International Court of Justice elected Judge Robert Yewdall Jennings to be its President and Judge Shigeru Oda to be its Vice-President. Both offices carry five-year terms. Given the growing role of the Court, these elections are a significant tribute to, and responsibility for, two outstanding scholars of international law. Both have published in this Journal and are Honorary Members of the Society.