The International Court of Justice at its Present Stage of Development

The object of this study is not to give an outline on the role and function of the International Court of Justice in general but to evaluate its present situation. This is quite a different subject although for this purpose it will be indispensable to compare achievement reached by the Court with the role assigned to it at the time of its foundation as part of the basic structure of the United Nations, the legal organization of the international community. Reminding at the very beginning, of deficiencies actually existing, I do not want to intimate that the problems with which judicial settlement of international disputes is confronted are due to the Court, either entirely or in its major part. The principal difficulty stems from the fact that adjudication of disputes by courts is today, for various reasons, less popular in the international society than other means of settling conflicting interests. The International Court of Justice shall be the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. This is the wording of Article 92 of the Charter. The Court is the only judicial institution to which all the States in the world have access. Its function is not restricted to the members of the United Nations. The Charter constitutes it as the general Court of the international community as a whole, non-member States being admitted to submit their disputes to the Court either through becoming a party to its Statute (which forms an integral part of the Charter) on conditions determined by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council,1 or by making particular or general declarations of accepting the jurisdiction of the Court under a resolution of the Security Council as early as 1946

“A very orderly retreat”: Democratic transition in East Germany, 1989-90

East Germany's 1989-90 democratisation is among the best known of East European transitions, but does not lend itself to comparative analysis, due to the singular way in which political reform and democratic consolidation were subsumed by Germany's unification process. Yet aspects of East Germany's democratisation have proved amenable to comparative approaches. This article reviews the comparative literature that refers to East Germany, and finds a schism between those who designate East Germany's transition “regime collapse” and others who contend that it exemplifies “transition through extrication”. It inquires into the merits of each position and finds in favour of the latter. Drawing on primary and secondary literature, as well as archival and interview sources, it portrays a communist elite that was, to a large extent, prepared to adapt to changing circumstances and capable of learning from “reference states” such as Poland. Although East Germany was the Soviet state in which the positions of existing elites were most threatened by democratic transition, here too a surprising number succeeded in maintaining their position while filing across the bridge to market society. A concluding section outlines the alchemy through which their bureaucratic power was transmuted into property and influence in the “new Germany”

The International Court of Justice at its Present Stage of Development

The object of this study is not to give an outline on the role and function of the International Court of Justice in general but to evaluate its present situation. This is quite a different subject although for this purpose it will be indispensable to compare achievement reached by the Court with the role assigned to it at the time of its foundation as part of the basic structure of the United Nations, the legal organization of the international community. Reminding at the very beginning, of deficiencies actually existing, I do not want to intimate that the problems with which judicial settlement of international disputes is confronted are due to the Court, either entirely or in its major part. The principal difficulty stems from the fact that adjudication of disputes by courts is today, for various reasons, less popular in the international society than other means of settling conflicting interests. The International Court of Justice shall be the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. This is the wording of Article 92 of the Charter. The Court is the only judicial institution to which all the States in the world have access. Its function is not restricted to the members of the United Nations. The Charter constitutes it as the general Court of the international community as a whole, non-member States being admitted to submit their disputes to the Court either through becoming a party to its Statute (which forms an integral part of the Charter) on conditions determined by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council,1 or by making particular or general declarations of accepting the jurisdiction of the Court under a resolution of the Security Council as early as 1946

Supra-National Judicial Decisions and National Courts

International judicial decisions have been gaining increasing importance, and there is a trend in favor of the application of international law in the national sphere of jurisdiction. Justice Mosler of the International Court of Justice discusses at length the various supra-national courts of universal, regional, and specialized jurisdiction. The Article continues with an analysis of the relationship between national and supra-national courts, forms of supra-national judgments, and the effect of these judgments on the national judiciary of the states party to the action and on non-party states. Finally, the relevance of multilateral treaty systems to the enforcement of international judgments is examined