The editor of this volume, Professor Richard B. Lillich, has written a Preface to it which he is particularly qualified to write, as the chairman of the Sokol Colloquia at the University of Virginia, the editor of the distinguished Procedural Aspects of International Law Series, and a leading scholar and practitioner in the field of international litigation. He has invited me to prepare an Introduction, containing such observations on the topic and papers of this volume as I may have been stimulated to make by them and by my participation in the Eleventh Sokol Colloquium. While I found all of the papers stimulating, I shall confine these comments to aspects of fact-finding in the International Court of Justice. In taking up Professor Lillich's invitation, I have been guided by the forthright Foreword written by Judge Philip C. Jessup to Volume 13 of the Procedural Aspects of International Law Series, the revised edition of D. Sandifer's Evidence before International Tribunals (1975). My concerns may be illustrated by the Court's fact-finding in three cases in which I have participated: the ELSI case, the Yakimetz case, and the Nicaragua case. In my discussion of these cases, I am constrained to say no more than I have already set out in my dissenting opinions.

Case Concerning Elettronica Sicula S.P.A. (ELSI) – and Chamber Advantages

The ELSI case turned on allegations by the United States that the requisition by Italian authorities of a factory in Sicily operated by an Italian company whose stock was wholly owned by two American companies was in breach of provisions of a 1948 Treaty of Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation between the United States and Italy.