The present World Court, the International Court of Justice (I.C.J.), has not earned the same reputation or made so useful a contribution to the development of international justice as its predecessor, the Permanent Court of International Justice (P.C.I.J.) and, as time goes by and its list of cases shrinks ever further, there is every indication that the I.C.J. is destined to play an even less significant rôle in the last quarter of the 20th century. The merit of this slim but thought-provoking volume is that it embodies a review of the court’s recent work and constructive proposals for its future rôle by an international lawyer who brings to his task the skills of the Legal Realist and Sociological schools of jurisprudence, the insight of a student of comparative constitutional law and the awareness of a perceptive observer of current trends in international relations.

The book consists of nine chapters, dealing with, inter alia, classical international law sources and contemporary law-making; alleged examples of “judicial self-restraint” and “judicial activism” in the court’s “judicial law-making”; alternative law making modes, including a study of the UN Conference on the Law of the Sea as an international codifying conference and of the General Assembly’s rôle in creating a New International Economic Order; and, finally, in a concluding chapter, the possible future rôle of the court.

As readers familiar with Professor McWhinney’s earlier work would expect, there is much to stimulate and inform in this volume. At the same time, however, many of the author’s judgments and arguments will possibly appear unconvincing to readers who, like the reviewer, are still tainted by the “classical” international lawyer’s conception of the sources of international law and of the rôle of the I.C.J. Limitations of space forbid a full review of all nine chapters of this work but it may suffice to illustrate this criticism by referring to Chapter 3 which is devoted to a study of the French Nuclear Tests case.

Professor McWhinney’s main concern in this chapter is to discover “why a Court majority with a demonstrated record of imagination, innovation and leadership in the creation and refinement of new norms of law and in the international law-making process in general, should prefer the course of judicial self-restraint in the French Nuclear Tests case”. Many international lawyers will share this reviewer’s doubts about the motives attributed to the court’s majority by the author. He appears to be arguing that the path of judicial self-restraint was chosen because the majority in the court felt that, for a variety of reasons, this case did not serve as a satisfactory vehicle for sustained judicial policy-making in a major new area of international legal concern. The “effective withdrawal” of the court should thus, the argument proceeds, minimise any damage to the court caused by the premature venture in judicial policy-making in the court’s order of 1973, whereby interim measures of protection were granted in relation to the French nuclear tests. If the majority of the I.C.J. Judges do indeed think in this way, it should surprise no one if, in the future, an increasing number of States