This book brings together world experts on the United Nations and international law, to examine not only the content of that legal regime but how it has been transformed since the second half of the twentieth century.

States often regard themselves bound by treaty rules which have developed under customary international law, even though many of the treaties themselves have not been ratified. The Law of the Sea Convention, for instance, has generated new customary rules which modified the 1958 Geneva Conventions. These & many other issues are dealt with clearly & systematically in this informative handbook on the relations between written & unwritten international law. The conclusions of the first edition of Customary International Law & Treaties were largely confirmed by the International Court of Justice in the Nicaragua Case. This fully revised second edition, while basing itself on the original version, brings the subject up to date.

This work presents a new perspective on the role of States as reciprocal trustees for the Oceans Public Trust. The concept of the oceans and navigable waters as held in public trust is examined from its origins in the 17th century North Sea fisheries controversy with particular regard to the arguments by Selden and Grotius pertaining to State jurisdiction over oceans and marginal sea areas. Those arguments manifest an underlying common principle of navigational freedom reflected in the parallel public trust development of public rights to fishing and navigation as protected and preserved within the Royal Prerogative "jus publicum," The significance for the modern context is that the 1958 Geneva Conventions on the Law of the Sea, the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and a myriad of other conventions now evidence an unstated but patent public trust in the communal responsibility of States within both the conventional and customary regime of the high seas, as well as in regimes for territorial seas and marginal sea areas as shared with extended coastal State jurisdictions. This book is intended to serve as a reference work for this somewhat arcane source of the Oceans Public Trust, and should prove a useful research source for those who study law of the sea.

"A study of their interactions and interrelations, with special consideration of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties."--T.p.