10 December, 1978 marked the thirtieth anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations. Anticipating this anniversary the Economic and Social Council and the General Assembly joined in recommending that a general review of existing United Nations approaches to the promotion and observance of human rights be undertaken.

Most textbooks on private international law, when dealing with public policy, refer to its relativity. “Public policy is not absolute but relative”. This relativity rule appears to have three different functions. The first is merely to stress that it is always the result in the concrete case that counts. Here “relativity” is a misleading description.

On 27 March 1977 two Boeing 747 aircraft collided on the runway in Tenerife, Spain.

This was, from a legal point of view, to become perhaps the most complicated aircrash that ever occurred. Very shortly after this disaster parties, involved in the legal battle that would ensue, embarked upon large scale settlement negotiations, in many cases concurrent with legal proceedings in the USA.

The aim of this study is to discuss the fishery rights of the landlocked and geographically disadvantaged states. Such discussion, however, relates to other discussions concerning the rights of the landlocked states of access to the sea and freedom of transit, the claims of the landlocked and geographically disadvantaged states to mineral resources of the sea and so on.

International Law governs man's use of outer space, per se, the Moon, and celestial bodies, e.g., the space environment. World natural resources situated in the space environment include geostationary orbital positions and the solar energy that in the future may be captured by a satellite power system (SPS). Such resources can be consumed. However, these resources are renewable. Use does not deplete them.

The duty or obligation not to infringe constitutionally protected fundamental human rights which have hitherto been owed by state organs towards individuals may now have been extended, in certain countries, to encompass relationships between individuals. This particular development – also referred to as an issue relating to “third parties (Drittwirkung)” or alternatively as one concerning the “horizontal” or “intersubjective” application of fundamental human rights – appears to have its origins in the German doctrine of the so-called “absolute effect of human rights”, whereby fundamental human rights which are defined in constitutions are considered to be enforceable by individuals against other private persons as well as by public authorities.

There are refugees and stateless persons. Some stateless persons are refugees and some refugees are stateless. They all lack proper protection. Often, stateless persons can be considered as refugees, as they might have “a well founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, and are unwilling or unable to avail themselves of the protection of … the country of habitual residence”. Refugees who are not stateless are those who for the above mentioned reasons are unable or unwilling to avail themselves of the protection of the country of their nationality. A difference is sometimes made between de jure and de facto stateless persons. It is better to speak about de jure and de facto unprotected persons. Generally, refugees are de facto unprotected and stateless persons are de jure unprotected. It would moreover seem more appropriate to concentrate on the protection aspect, as nationality can be related to various forms of protection. In this respect the difference between “unable” and “unwilling” should be stressed: stateless persons are normally unable to invoke any protection, while asylum-seekers with a nationality are normally unwilling to avail themselves of the protection of their country of nationality. It is taken for granted that the relationship between a country and its citizens involves ‘protection’ in whatever form that may be.

The legal regulation of the international contract of sale as a typical contract concluded between foreign trade enterprises from various Member States of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) is contained, as is known, in the General Conditions of Delivery of Goods of the Council now in force; they are denoted as the 1968/1975 General Conditions of Delivery of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance.

International relations have a long history, even if their character has changed from time to time to conform to changes in the concept of the nation and the structure of the state. The history of international law is, by contrast, extraordinarily brief. The period in which the existence of international law has had any influence on the character of international relations is briefer still; not until towards the end of the 18th century did this period begin. I shall argue that its commencement coincided with the final inauguration of the modern international system, and that one of the characteristics of the modern international system which distinguished it from all earlier systems of states is to be found in the fact that it was the first to pay regard to international law.

Both in the Netherlands and in West Germany, producers and merchants are very much accustomed to using standard forms of contract in their domestic business dealings, probably more so than their brethren in most other countries. The incidence of standard forms in international trade is probably even higher, since these transactions are concluded almost exclusively between businessmen.

Regulation of maritime transport is, in many countries a common phenomenon. The following three categories of regulation can be distinguished:

– rules of competition in the field of maritime transport, often referred to as conference or anti-conference legislation,

– flag preference provisions, e.g., cargo reservation provisions,

– retortion provisions or retaliatory provisions.

Provisions in these three categories all have in common that they are aimed to influence the market conditions under which maritime transport takes place. I have outlined the various national provisions regulating maritime transport in a 1979 report for the Dutch section of the ILA. Part III of that report analyses the question to what extent national provisions are compatible with international public law. The present article is a summary of that analysis.

The report concerns three facets that can be viewed as promoting the national merchant marine:

a. financial facilities, such as subsidies; b. registration facilities by which foreign ship tonnage is attracted; c. facilities with regard to nationality and wages of the ship's crew so as to enable the shipowner to operate at lower costs.

The subject will be treated in two parts. Part I traces these aspects on the national level, at first factually and then in a legal light. In the second part, the findings are tested against the norms of international law.

The main thesis which I shall develop and defend this afternoon before, and perhaps sometimes against you, is that international law is a political phenomenon through and through. Not in the sense so cleverly dogmatized by Kelsen that only that which emanates from official, governmental power is law; nor in that made especially popular by Weber, according to whom law is defined by reference to at least some likelihood of political sanctions. After all, these represent but special cases of a much more general or broader notion of law resulting from, forming the embodiment of, or being determined by some particular configuration of what I shall call ‘power and interest’ among the members of some system. That is, it is such configurations of power and interests which determine both the law's emergence as a set of stated or implicit rules of conduct, and its eventual effectiveness in guiding or even controlling such conduct, as well as the social or political processes ensuing from it.

The present Convention has now been in force in the Netherlands for almost eight years. The Netherlands has made the two reservations allowed by the Convention. The first is that the Convention will be applied only as regards minors who have the nationality of a Contracting State (Art. 13 section 3). The second is that the competence to issue measures regarding minors of parents whose marriage has been annulled or dissolved or who have separated is reserved to the authorities which dealt with the annullment, dissolution or separation concerned (Art. 15 section 1). According to the Explanatory Memorandum of the Act ratifying the Convention (Bijl. Hand. II 69/70–10450 (R719)), the object of making the first reservation is to prevent the existence of Dutch measures which will not be recognized elsewhere. It is to be expected, so the Explanatory Memorandum continues, that a country of which the minor is a national will be more willing to recognize a measure issued pursuant to its own law. Note must be taken of the fact that the Explanatory Memorandum is based on the ordinary rules of Dutch private international law as they were at that time, i.e., custody and other matters concerning the protection of minors are in principle to be governed by the national law of the minor and, in exceptional cases, Dutch law is to be applied as the law of the habitual residence of the minor (Bijl. Hand. 70/71–10.450 (R719)). The object of making the first reservation is somewhat weakened, however, by making the second reservation, because according to Article 15 section 2 of the Convention the consequence of making the reservation under Article 15 section 1 is that the other Contracting States are not obliged to recognize the measures taken by Dutch authorities pursuant to Article 15 section 1. (See further below. Note to Part 6, regarding the second reservation). At present the object of making the first reservation is even more questionable, because there is no generally accepted opinion, so far as judicial decisions are concerned, as to whether the non-conventional Dutch conflict of laws rule should be based on nationality or on habitual residence. (See Kokkini-Iatridou: “Overzicht der Nederlandse rechtspraak, Internationaal Privaatrecht, Gezag over minderjarigen”, WPNR 1978, pp. 6–12, 24–25).