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IN THE ELECTION CAMPAIGN WHICH FOLLOWED GOUGH WHITLAM'S DISMISSAL AS PRIME MINISTER, THE LABOR PARTY AND THE LIBERAL-COUNTRY PARTY ACCLAIMED THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S ACTION AS, RESPECTIVELY, AN ASSAULT UPON AND A DEFENSE OF THE CONSTITUTION. JUSTIFICATION FOR THE DISMISSAL WAS BASED ON THE BLOCKAGE BY THE SENATE OF THE SUPPLY BILL, WHICH MEANT THAT APPROPRIATED FUNDS WOULD RUN OUT.

The biggest and most complicated international conference of all time began in Caracas in mid 1974 and after a ten weeks session was adjourned to meet again in Geneva for a similar period in 1975. The purpose of the conference is to recodify the Law of the Sea, with the aim of reconciling the competing maritime interests of nations and restraining growing international tension over the uses of the sea and the seabed. It is indicative of the pace of the world we live in that this vast diplomatic undertaking has been found necessary only fifteen years after the 1958 Geneva Conference on the Law of the Sea. That Conference thought it was codifying and stabilizing the rules of law for a long period, if not in perpetuity, in respect of the freedom of the high seas, the rights of coastal States in the territorial sea and to the continental shelf, and conservation of fisheries.

It is sometimes stated that the question of state succession to treaties is a question more of treaty interpretation than of the existence or otherwise of general rules of law concerning the fate of treaties upon change of sovereignty. In general terms the proposition is true: a customary rule favoring or negativing devolution would tend to be either excessively comprehensive or excessively restrictive with respect to the category of treaties whose fate is in issue. Many treaties, upon interpretation, might be found to be inapplicable under the new circumstances, while many others might be deliberately drafted in anticipation of a change of sovereignty, and might incorporate a clause providing for the solution of the problem. A study of concrete issues is thus, generally, more instructive in determining the effect of change of sovereignty upon treaties than is the enunciation of general principles of succession.