Locked in south central Africa by Zambia, Mozambique, Botswana and the Republic of South Africa, Rhodesia comprises a land mass of over 150,000 square miles and a population of about four million blacks and 220,000 whites. From 1889 until 1922 the area was administered by a chartered company formed by Cecil Rhodes. In 1922 the white settlers opted for the status of a self-governing colony, and in 1923 Southern Rhodesia was annexed by Great Britain. In 1953 it joined, with Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland in a federation, still under the United Kingdom; the venture proved unsuccessful and was terminated in 1963.

The scope of this paper is limited to the study of Communist China’s attitude toward some important legal problems of the United Nations, such as its legal status, the binding force of its resolutions and the Chinese representation question. In regard to sources, this paper is based upon Communist China’s official statements, treaties, the record of its international practice and the views expressed by certain Communist Chinese writers.

Several elements have interacted to influence the course and pattern of the boundaries and the regime of Soviet territorial waters. The foremost of these is national security. All of the seas bordering the U.S.S.R. have narrow entrances which can be commanded easily by hostile foreign Powers. During the Russian Revolution and subsequent Civil War, German vessels and, after the War, Allied vessels in the Baltic and the Dardanelles restricted to an uncomfortable extent the freedom of action of the Soviet Government. Soviet weakness in the Baltic theater was a major factor in determining Soviet policy towards Finland and the Baltic states during the 1939-1941 period, and the proximity of NATO naval forces to the Baltic continues to provoke Soviet proposals to close the sea to noncoastal Powers. Similarly, the U.S.S.R. was compelled to endure Turkish violations of the Montreux Convention on the Turkish Straits during World War II while its Black Sea fleet was immobilized. The Pacific coast seas and the Atlantic and Pacific approaches to the Arctic seas are also susceptible to a blockade by hostile Powers. Even the Arctic seas themselves, once regarded as an unguarded but impregnable frozen boundary, have become unexpectedly vulnerable with the development of nuclear submarines.

After twenty years of frustrated attempts to bring South Africa to accept her international obligations in respect of South West Africa, the United Nations General Assembly resolved on October 27, 1966, to terminate South Africa’s right to administer the Territory. In this resolution the Assembly declared that

As soon as the House of Representatives considers and passes the Diplomatic Relations Act of 1967, and the President signs the new Act into law, the United States will proceed to deposit its ratification of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. These two documents will make rather extensive changes in United States law and practice with respect to diplomatic privileges and immunities. It will be the purpose of this article to give a capsule summary of the manner in which the Diplomatic Relations Act may be anticipated to operate in the future, and to indicate the pertinent areas in which the previous United States law and practice will be affected thereby.

This work forms a companion volume to Legal Advisers and Foreign Affairs published three years ago in a similar format, under the same editorship and auspices, and reviewed by the present writer in this Journal for January, 1965. Like its predecessor it is the outcome of a symposium sponsored by the American Society of International Law under the Chairmanship of its President, Professor Brunson MacChesney, which took place at Bellagio in August, 1965, the participants being members not of government legal services but of the analogous services of representative international organizations. In sponsoring the Bellagio Conference the Society was following up and extending its exploration of the rôle played by the “service” legal adviser in the international field—a rôle which, as the present reviewer previously had occasion to point out in connection with the functions of legal advisers to governments and government departments, has certainly been neglected and, because neglected, to some extent misunderstood.

The Board of Review and Development of the American Society of International Law met at Princeton, New Jersey, on June 2 and 3, 1967. This was the fifth meeting of this body since its establishment was authorized by the Executive Council of the Society in November, 1964. The Board devoted its June meeting primarily to discussion of interim reports of the panels working under the Board’s auspices. This note abstracts from the two days of deliberations various questions and problems in the sphere of international law that were identified as especially deserving of further analysis and research.

On April 21, 1967, a Western Regional Conference on "Science, Law and Industry in Transnational Business Transactions" was held at the University of Denver Law Center under the co-sponsorship of the American Society of International Law, the University of Denver College of Law, the University of Colorado School of Law, the Committee on World Peace Through Law of the Colorado Bar Association, the Inter-American Bar Association, the University of Denver Graduate School of International Studies, the United States Department of Commerce, and the International Law Society of the University of Denver.

A computer-coded analysis of United Nations General Assembly resolutions is presently in progress at the University of Toledo College of Law for the purpose of studying systematically the law-making qualities of the resolutions. In the course of this project I also hope to develop some effective research tools for those who desire quick access to resolutions relating to particular substantive questions. The following information is being coded for each resolution : committee source ; operative words; references to geographic entities and co-ordinate and subsidiary organizational units ; and all citations of the U.N. Charter, the Statute and decisions of the I.C.J., General Assembly Eules of Procedure, and previous resolutions of the General Assembly and the various Councils. In addition, each resolution will be classified under one or more subject-matter headings and one or more of about twenty functional categories, such as “creation of committees,” “conciliation of a dispute,” and “interpretation of the U.N. Charter.” On the basis of this data, I intend to study such questions as the significance of re-citation of resolutions which purport to declare rules of law, and the frequency and quality of interpretations and elaborations of the U.N. Charter in the resolutions.

The Institute of International Relations is a private research institute organized by scholars in the Republic of China. Its object is to study Chinese Communist affairs and other international problems. The Institute sponsors several seminars a year to discuss various problems of current international affairs. It publishes two monthly periodicals in Chinese: (1) Wen-t’i yü yen-chiù [Problems and Research] ; and (2) Fei-chin yiieh-pao [Chinese Communist Affairs Monthly]. In 1964, it began to publish an English monthly entitled Issues and Studies, which devotes most of its space to the analysis and study of Chinese Communists. The Institute also publishes books on various problems of Chinese Communists.

The yearly Congress of the International Association of Young Lawyers (A.I.J.A.) was held in London from July 24 to 27, 1967. 150 young lawyers attended from the United States, Argentina, Germany, France, Belgium, Spain, England, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Holland, and Switzerland. The Congress began with a solemn opening ceremony presided over by Attorney General Sir Blwyn Jones. The members of the A.I.J.A. were thereafter received by the Lord Mayor of London at a lunch given by the Corporation of London.

The Hague Academy of International Law will hold its 1968 session from July 8 to August 15, 1968. The first period of lectures from July 8 to 25 will consist of the following : general course on private international law, by Professor A. A. Ehrenzweig of the University of California; law of torts in private international law, by Professor O. Kahn-Freund of Brasenose College, Oxford; international contracts in Swiss private international law, by Dr. A. F. Schnitzer of the University of Geneva Faculty of Law; trade and finance in international law, by Professor J. E. Fawcett of All Souls College, Oxford; public international law influences on conflicts of law rules on corporations, by Professor I. Seidl-Hohenveldern of the University of Cologne; juridical aspects of intergovernmental cooperation in the field of foreign exchange and international payments, by Professor M. Giuliano of the University of Milan ; multinational corporate groups, by Mr. Homer G. Angelo, visiting Professor of Law, University of California; general features of the codification of private international law in Czechoslovakia, by Professor R. Bistricky of the Carolinum University, Prague.

The American Society of International Law will hold its 62nd annual meeting at the Washington Hilton Hotel in Washington, D. C from April 25 to April 27, 1968.

The meeting will open on Thursday, April 25, 1968, at 2:15 p. m. Two simultaneous panel discussions will then consider the implementation and enforcement of international decisions, under the chairmanship of Oscar Sehachter, and the taking of property : evaluation of damages, under the chairmanship of James N. Hyde. Michael Eeisman and Blame Sloan will deliver addresses on the implementation and enforcement of international decisions. Commentators on those addresses will be Henry Darwin, Ambassador Shabtai Rosenne and John Lawrence Hargrove.

The third Cumulative Analytical Index to the American Journal of International Law, Supplements and Proceedings, will be published in March, 1968. It covers the years 1941 to 1960 inclusive. As announced in the Society’s Letter to Members for November-December, 1967, the price of the volume is $10.00 to members and $15.00 to non-members. Orders may be sent to the Society together with checks payable to the Society and marked for the Cumulative Index.