In the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence the nascent United States acknowledged “a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind.” This constituted, to a certain extent, an express acceptance of the binding force of international law, a corpus of rules based upon generally prevalent opinio juris.

The deprivations with which we are here concerned are those imposed upon individuals on the ground that they do not possess the “nationality” of the imposing state. By nationality we refer to the “characterizations” states make of individuals for the purpose of controlling and protecting them for the many comprehensive concerns of states. Since the larger transnational community honors states in the conferment and withdrawal of “nationality” upon many different grounds—including place of birth, blood relation, subjective identification of individuals, and various activities—these characterizations may bear little relation to the actual facts of particular community membership and, hence, to reasonable differentiations in terms of common interest in the larger community of mankind. It is our thesis that most deprivations imposed through these characterizations are made unlawful, not merely by the historic law of the responsibility of states, but also by a newly emerged general norm of nondiscrimination which seeks to forbid all generic differentiations among people in access to value shaping and sharing for reasons irrelevant to individual capabilities and contribution.

The United States and some other members of the United Nations have been concerned in recent years about the substance of some resolutions of the General Assembly and the procedures by which they were adopted. Their concern was intensified by certain actions at the twenty-ninth session, when the Assembly sustained a ruling of its President with respect to the representation and participation of South Africa in that and future sessions, when it curbed the right of Israel to participate in the debate on the question of Palestine, when it accorded to the representative of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) a treatment usually reserved to the head of a member state, and when it declared by Resolution 3210 (XXIX) of October 14, 1974, “that the Palestinian people is the principal party to the question of Palestine” and invited the PLO “to participate in the deliberations of the General Assembly on the question of Palestine in plenary meetings.”

The new Greek Constitution which entered into force on June 11, 1975, offers to international lawyers an illustration of the increasing importance given to international legal issues by politicians and constitutional experts as they attempt to fashion constitutional structures more in keeping with contemporary international realities. The provisions of the new Constitution concerning international law and relations which are discussed here are largely consistent with current constitutional trends in Western Europe. They, and the debate around them, may also yield useful insights into the role and importance of the international legal context for a small country actively involved in and influenced by world affairs. They are thus of interest not only to those who follow political events in Greece but to a wider public concerned with democracy and internationalism.