The Antarctic Treaty System (ATS), founded upon the Antarctic Treaty of 1959, has proved to be one of the successes of twentieth century international law and diplomacy. Over the last 50 years, the Antarctic Treaty has preserved the Antarctic continent as a zone of peace and cooperative scientific research and provided an effective model for the management of regions beyond the limits of nation...

Countries, such as France, Spain. China. India. Korea and satellite nations of the former Soviet Union have been cultivating industrial hemp for years. A 1961 United Nations Single Convention Treaty specifically allows cultivation of cannabis for industrial purposes. and the more recent NAFTA and GATT international trade agreements recognize hemp as a valid agricultural crop. These internationa...

It has been over half a century since the landmark Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs was adopted, for the first time unifying international drug policy under a single treaty aimed at limiting use, manufacture, trade, possession, and trafficking of opiates, cannabis, and other narcotics. Since then, other international drug policy measures have been adopted, largely emphasizing enforcement-bas...

National governments have intensified their attempts to create international institutions in various policy fields such as the environment, finance and trade. At the same time, many subnational policy makers have begun to duplicate international efforts by setting their own, stricter policies while others remain inactive or enact more lax regulation. This ‘glocalization’ of policy creates a com...

This paper studies the impact of international market structure on commodity prices. I use a standard oligopoly model and exploit historical variations in the structure of the international coffee bean market in order to measure how successful a cartel treaty was and to assess its global welfare consequences. The results suggest that the International Coffee Agreement (ICA, 1965–89) raised pric...

Dinshaw Mistry is a doctoral candidate in Political Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and is currently in residence at the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C. He has recently published articles on the Indian space program (Pacific Affairs) and the missile nonproliferation regime (Contemporary Security Policy). DOMESTIC-INTERNATIONAL LINKAGES: INDIA AND THE COMPREHENSI...

THE first product of the work of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) in the area of international sale of goods was the Convention on the Limitation Period in the International Sale of Goods (Limitation Convention),1 which intended to consolidate a limited, but complex area of the law of sale of goods.2 The Limitation Convention was a forerunner and indeed functi...

I appreciate Alexis Palmer and colleagues’ empirical research on the eff ects of ratifi cation of human rights treaties on population health (June 6, p 1987). Despite their conclusion that ratifi cation has no benefi ts on health, issues surrounding the eff ect of human rights norms within treaties are complex and might not be fully captured through an analysis of correlations between ratifi ca...

ON 6 November 2003, the International Court of Justice delivered its long-awaited judgment in Oil Platforms (Islamic Republic of Iran v. United States of America). The judgment raises important issues relating to both jurisdiction and the law governing the use of force. By way of background, the Court was seised of a claim by Iran and a counterclaim by the USA alleging breaches of their 1955 bi...

Editorials 211 It is 10 years since the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control entered into force. 1 This binding treaty, the first to be negotiated under the auspices of WHO, is widely recognized as a major milestone in global health. Although challenges in fully implementing the treaty remain, it has been successful as a novel public health instrument. It has ...