The Canadian approach to international environmental law can be stated simply and briefly. First, this law is inadequate both in scope and substance; it is incomplete, inconsistent, fragmentary, and largely inchoate. Second, it must be developed on the basis of the principle that states have a duty to preserve the environment and must accept responsibility for any damage they cause to the environment of another state or to the environment beyond any state’s jurisdiction. Third, both substantive and adjectival law must be developed to enable effective application of this principle, either through existing institutions or through new ones established for the purpose of resolving environmental disputes.

La Notion de Passage inoffensif constitue l’un des principes les plus anciens du droit de la mer.

Actuellement confronté avec la menace croissante de la pollution maritime, ce principe se trouve fortement contesté dans un mouvement général de défense orchestré par les Etats côtiers. Parmi ceuxci se trouve le Canada, qui s’est fait récemment le champion de leur cause.

The uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the imminent Law of the Sea Conference is inevitable in the light of the lack of consensus on many of the most pressing problems of ocean law. Nowhere is this lack of agreement more evident than in the law regulating the world’s fishery resources.

During the past few years the attention of international lawyers and experts in related disciplines has been focused on the crucial considerations of continental shelf and ocean bed resources. Yet the legal problems related to international fisheries persist and increase.

Le 5 octobre 1971, le ministre canadien de l’Industrie et du Commerce déposait devant la Chambre des communes un échange de lettres intervenu entre le gouvernement du Canada et l’ambassadeur du Japon au Canada, aux termes duquel le Japon consentait à limiter ses exportations vers le Canada dans le domaine des textiles et de la radio. Quelques jours plus tard, soit le 15 octobre, le gouvernement des Etats-Unis annonçait que des mémoires d’entente avaient été négociés avec le Japon, Hong Kong, la République de Chine et la République de Corée, aux termes desquels ces pays acceptaient de restreindre leurs exportations de textiles de laine et fibres artificielles vers les Etats-Unis. De tels arrangements, communément appelés “entente de restriction volontaire à l’exportation” (Voluntary export restraint agreements), sont devenus suffisamment fréquents ces dernières années pour que l’on puisse parler d’un développement important dans le domaine du droit international économique. L’objet de la présente étude est précisément d’examiner les aspects juridiques de ce développement.

Surveying developments in and approaches to international legal studies, Professer Richard Falk has stated that “one of the major issues challenging time-honoured approaches to international law is the development of a more adequate theory of the basis of legal obligation in international society.” His context was a discussion of the difficulties involved in ascertaining new kinds of rules to govern violence during the cold war period and, particularly, the disputed normative effect of resolutions of the General Assembly. A year later, Dr. Oscar Schachter identified a number of factors that have given “enhanced importance to problems of indeterminacy of obligation” in the last few years. These included the quasi-legislative activities of United Nations institutions, the development of “rules of the game” in great power relationships, the increase in social revolution within states, the increase in patterns of co-operation as a resuit of the growing interdependence of states, the narrowing of the scope of the traditional concept of domestic jurisdiction, and the expansion of science and technology.

The midwives of international law, Gentili, Grotius, Vitoria, Suarez, Pufendorf, and Wolff, found the principles of this law in the law of nature. This, in turn, was derived by some of them from the law of God and by others from the law of reason. But, as the law of nations grew and its content developed, its derivation was established, particularly with Vattel in the middle of the eighteenth century, from the will of states rather than from the law of nature. Today’s international lawyer simply inherits the principle of identification whereby international-law rules of general application are created by international custom. (This custom is produced by that kind of practice of states relating to a matter of international relations which is concordant and general and is accompanied by the conviction of states that it is obligatory under international law.) The application of this principle of identification, however, is not so simple because of the appearance of three new situations.

Moins connu que le domaine des relations de travail, parce qu’il n’a pas encore fait naître de sérieuses difficultés, le domaine des relations diplomatiques et consulaires est susceptible de devenir la pierre d’achoppement du fédéralisme canadien d’aujourd’hui en matière de mise en application des traités. Le respect des immunités que le droit international accorde à ces agents étrangers nécessite en effet que les deux gouvernements fassent preuve d’une collaboration de mise en oeuvre, dont ni l’un ni l’autre ne semble avoir compris l’importance et l’urgence.

A significant increase in intermodal container transport led, during the period 1970–72, to intensive discussions in several international bodies concerning the proposed Convention on the International Combined Transport of Goods, known as the TCM Convention. Basically, the drafters of the convention aimed to establish a standard Combined Transport Contract (CT Document) and to provide for a new legal person called the Combined Transport operator (CTO). As the proposed convention could affect existing legal regimes that govern various modes of transporting cargo, it is not surprising that aviation interests, inter alia, carried out a searching and somewhat inconclusive examination of the implications of the proposed TCM Convention for international civil aviation.

Two recent cases have added substantially to the Canadian jurisprudence on divorce in the conflict of laws. In one, discussed in Part I of this article, a court of first instance in Alberta initiated what is likely to be a far-reaching change in the rules for the recognition of foreign decrees. In the other, discussed in Part II, the Supreme Court of Canada gave its imprimatur for the first time to the controversial doctrine whereby someone who has obtained an invalid foreign decree may be precluded from denying its validity in a Canadian court. Although the two questions that these cases deal with are quite separate, their treatment by the Alberta Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of Canada shows a common tendency to resolve conflicts problems by rules that are general and flexible rather than precise and arbitrary.

“The Decline and Fall of an Initiative” was the title Dean Mao donald gave to the last of his two articles on the proposal to create an office of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and it suggests that he intended to write an obituary. Since I happened to be present at the creation of the proposal, I can add a few details.

La Convention sur la prévention de la pollution résultant de l’immersion de déchets, adoptée à Londres le 13 novembre 1972, constitue une étape importante dans la reconnaissance par la communauté internationale de la nécessité de développer les règles et les principes du droit international en ce qui concerne la pollution du milieu marin. Cette convention s’inspire avant tout du souci d’adopter des mesures propres à réglementer un problème particulier, mais si on l’analyse sous un aspect plus large, on voit qu’elle représente une première tentative de faire évoluer les principes du droit international en la matière et de faire accepter une nouvelle série de conventions traitant de toutes les sources de pollution du milieu marin.

Canada’s brief participation in the International Commission for Control and Supervision (ICCS) in Vietnam, from the end of January to July 31, 1973, ended her active role as a supervisory power for maintaining peace in Indo-China, although it did not imply an abandonment of her traditional policy of working in the interests of international stability and coexistence.

Canada was a natural choice for the new peace-keeping machinery by virtue of her 19-year experience in the three International Control Commissions (ICC), even though she had taken no part in the protracted secret negotiations that led to the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam signed on January 27, 1973, by the United States, the Democratie Republic of Vietnam, the Republic of Vietnam, and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam. The American Secretary of State, Mr. William P. Rogers, and the Canadian Minister for External Affairs, Mr. Mitchell Sharp, therefore consulted as early as October 25 and subsequently on November 20, 1972, to consider Canada’s possible participation, with Indonesia, Hungary, and Poland, in a new agency to be known as ICCS.

Traditionally, citizens in one country who suffer damages as a resuit of pollution caused by the activities of citizens of another country have looked to governmental channels for settlement of their claims. A classic case in point was the Trail Smelter Arbitration between the United States and Canada, in which the American government successfully espoused the cause of its nationals in the State of Washington against the Canadian government for damage caused by the smoke from the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company operations at Trail, British Columbia. If, however, this case continues to intrigue legal commentators and foreign office legal advisors as a leading precedent in the field of international environmental law, few residents of southwestern Ontario could presently be convinced of the practical relevance of this precedent.

Under the traditional rule enunciated by Willes J. in Phillips v. Eyre both the lex fori and lex loci delicti are relevant, to some extent, in actions upon foreign torts. The requirements of the rule, that the wrong be actionable if committed in the jurisdiction of the forum and not justifiable by the law of the place, have been subjected to considerable judicial and extrajudicial scrutiny. In relation to the latter element, the recent and already famous House of Lords decision in Chaplin v. Boys establishes that it is not necessary to show actionability under the lex loci delicti for each and every substantive matter. In the opinion of Lord Pearson and Lord Donovan something less than complete civil liability sufficed to render an act not justifiable where donc, while Lord Wilberforce and Lord Hodson appeared to require compliance with the lex loci delicti in all respects, but were prepared to create an exception for appropriate cases.