The term “navigation” in the purely technical sense means no more than the movement of vessels; in this sense the term is used in regulations bearing on the technical conditions for the movement of ships. “Navigation”, the freedom of which is established in international treaties, has a quite different meaning. Freedom of communications (including freedom of navigation on rivers) and freedom of commerce had already been conceived as correlative and complementary notions in natural law. Both the earliest and most recent treaties on inland navigation give conclusive evidence that dissociation of these two notions was never contemplated. It is true that freedom of navigation and freedom of commerce are, in principle, concerned with different matters. Navigation understood as the mere movement of vessels, may be exercised for scientific, philanthropic or recreational purposes. However, such movement of vessels for non-commercial purposes was never of such importance as to justify international regulation. Every international agreement in this field has envisaged granting freedom of navigation as an economic activity. Never, in international treaties, has navigation been treated exclusively as movement of vessels in the technical sense, viz. as an activity with an end in itself. On the contrary, for the purpose of international regulation, navigation has constantly been regarded as an economic activity, viz. as the operation of transport services for passengers and, in particular, goods. In other words, the international regulations have always regarded navigation as the exercise of the shipping trade.

The disappearance of the Third Reich from the international scene and the emergence of two German States was accomplished by such unorthodox means that the literature on the subject often resorts to the qualification “sui generis” when describing situations and facts, for which there are no precedents. Furthermore, the legal problems connected with the status of the German Democratic Republic (G.D.R.) and the Federal Republic of Germany (F.R.G.) are so closely related to the development of political relations in Europe, that they cannot be considered in isolation from political elements.

On 28 February 1667, Commander Abraham Crijnsen, with a squadron of three sail and a number of small craft carrying three hundred soldiers, all in the service of the County of Zealand, came up the Surinam River in the then English colony of Guiana.

Hans Kelsen is undoubtedly among the foremost jurists of this century. Roscoe Pound, himself not an insubstantial figure in the field, considered him “un questionably the leading jurist of the time”. Kelsen occupied himself in particular with three branches of law: constitutional law, legal philosophy, and international law.

As recorded in the previous volume of this Yearbook, most of those participating in the Conference of Government Experts on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons held at Lucerne from 24 September - 18 October 1974 came to the realization that a second experts' conference would be necessary to examine further the issues which had proved so controversial at Lucerne. At the same time, as a mere repetition of the Lucerne exercise would serve no useful purpose, it was decided that a second conference would concentrate on the weapons which might have been, or might become, the subject of proposals to ban or restrict their use, and its task would be to study the possibility, contents and form of such proposed bans or restrictions. A conference with these terms of reference was duly convened by the International Committee of the Red Cross (or I.C.R.C.), and met from 28 January - 26 February 1976 at Lugano, Switzerland; so as to avoid having to start all over again with the drawing up of Rules of Procedure and similar organizational matters, it was designated as the “second session” of the Conference of Government Experts on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons.