Abstract
Apart from the efforts in law-making undertaken by the International Labour Organization since 1919 and by the League of Nations since 1922, there was little real law-making activity on the part of the few intergovernmental organizations, like the Universal Postal Union, that preceded these two. No doubt there were some limited bilateral as well as multilateral agreements or treaties by which States attempted to regulate certain areas of their trade and other commercial relations, but these were not law-making enactments of an international character, even if many of them embodied therein principles and rules of customary international law. For conscious international law-making, therefore, it is necessary to look back to the various Conventions adopted under the auspices of the International Labour Organization, including its Legislative Series, dating back to 1919; the series consists not of enacted legislation of the ILO itself but of its own Conventions and of the legislative enactments of member countries on various labour matters. And to look back to the League of Nations Series, which comprise the transactions of the League and the numerous documents regulating inter-State relations adopted by, or registered with, the League. In either case, the number of participating States was as limited as was the species of subject matter dealt with. Both lacked the universality and the comprehensiveness which characterise post-1945 international law-making.
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References
League of Nations, Official Journal,Special Supplement, No. 21, p. 10.
League of Nations, Official Journal,Special Supplement, No. 53, p. 9.
Ibid.,No. 92, p. 9.
This is most infrequent in the practice of the United Nations.
See The Work of the International Law Commission,3rd ed., United Nations, New York, 1980, for a detailed account of its activities from that time up to date.
U.N. Commission on International Trade Law, Yearbook,Vol. I, 1968–1970, p. 8, para. 3.
Ibid.,1970, VoL I, p. 58, para. 4.
U.N. Commission on International Trade Law, Yearbook, 1970, Vol. I, pp. 59–60.
A.J. Peaslee, International Governmental Organizations, Constitutional Documents, rev. 2nd, The Hague, 1961, Part I, p. 1297.
See Resolution A/35/141 for the text.
See L Detter, Law-making by International Organizations,Stockholm, 1965; D.H.N. Johnson, “The Effect of Resolutions of the General Assembly of the United Nations,” B. Y.I.L.,32 (1955–56), pp. 97–122; and R. Higgins, The Development of International Law through the Political Organs of the United Nations,London, 1963.
See the various references to the General Assembly resolutions affirming the validity of the new principles of the right of peoples to self-determination and political independence in Legal Consequences for States of the Continued Presence of South Africa in Namibia (South West Africa) notwithstanding Security Council Resolution 276 (1970), Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. Reports 1971,p. 16; Western Sahara, Advisory Opinion, I.CJ. Reports 1975,p. 12. See also General Assembly Resolution terminating South Africa’s Mandate over South West Africa, 27 Oct. 1966, Res. No. 2145 XXL
Consider the definite pronouncements of the International Court of Justice in Reservations to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. Reports 1951,p. 15, regarding the binding character of the Convention adopted by the United Nations General Assembly.
See, for example, C.W. Jenks, “The Scope of International Law,” B. Y.I.L. 31 (1954) pp. 1–48; Sir Gerald Fitzmaurice, “The Law and Procedure of the International Court of Justice 1951–54: Questions of Jurisdiction, Competence and Procedure,” B. Y. I. L. 34 (1958). A better approach to the new developments in international lawmaking seems, however, to be discernible in certain writers, as Judge Philip C. Jessup in his Transnational Law, London, 156; W.G. Friedman, The Changing Structure of International Law, London, 1964, pp. 152 ff; and R.Y. Jennings, “The Progress of International Law,” B. Y.I. L. 34 (1958).
We need not emphasize, for example, the LC.J. Advisory Opinion in Certain Expenses of the United Nations (Art. 17, para. 2, of the Charter), I.C.J. Reports 1962,p. 151, which was based on the series of resolutions of the General Assembly and of the Security Council, establishing the peace-keeping force in the Congo in respect of which the U.N. expenses had been undertaken and held enforceable.
Note in this connection the controversial Article 81(2)(c) of the 1978 new Rules of the I.C.J., suggesting that an intervener should have a jurisdictional link with the parties to a case before the Court, as a condition of the Court’s permitting it to intervene, when there is no explicit requirement in the relevant Article 62 of the Statute of the Court.
L C.J. Reports 1970, p. 3.
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© 1983 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Elias, T.O. (1983). The rule-making process and the future of international law. In: The International Court of Justice and some contemporary problems. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-4865-0_11
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