Building Anew 413tional Law Commission. Its task was the codifi cation of international law—
not, however, in the grand sense of producing a single systematic code of the
whole of international law in the manner of Bluntschli or Fiore in the previ-
ous century, but rather in the more modest sense of codifying selected topic
areas within the fi eld. For guidance on what topics to cover, the UN secre-
tariat sought the advice of Lauterpacht. In 1949, he drew up a provisional list
of subjects for the commission.
It has been noted that the plan to establish an international criminal
court did not produce the anticipated eff ect. Other initiatives, however,
fared better. Foremost among them was the draft ing of a set of articles on
the law of the sea in 1956, with a recommendation that states convene an
international conference to consider them. Th e resulting conference, held
in 1958, used the articles as the basis of four conventions on key aspects of
the law of the sea: on territorial waters, high seas, fi sheries, and continental
shelves. Th ese were then widely ratifi ed by states. Th is codifi cation was
not, however, comprehensive. Th e most outstanding matter left unsettled
was the width of territorial waters. A follow- up conference of states was held
in 1960 to resolve this point, but agreement continued to prove elusive.
A second major area of achievement was diplomatic law. In this case, too,
the commission produced a set of articles (in 1958). Th ese were then used
by governments as the basis for the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Rela-
tions of 1961. One of the most important contributions of this agreement
was the fi xing of uniform general rules among states on the delicate subject
of diplomatic immunities. Th e agreed policy was, basically, to grant absolute
immunity to persons with diplomatic ranking, but more restricted immuni-
ties to ancillary persons such as support staff and family members.
Th e third major achievement of the International Law Commission in
this period was to produce a set of articles on the law of treaties in 1966.
With these as guidance, a conference of states concluded the Vienna Con-
vention on the Law of Treaties three years later. Many issues regarding
treaties were clarifi ed, but just one may be mentioned briefl y: reservations to
multilateral treaties. Th e practice had previously been that a state could en-
ter a reservation only if all of the other parties to the treaty consented to it.
An advisory opinion of the World Court in 1951 had made an exception to
this in the case of treaties for which universal adherence was being sought.
Th e Vienna Convention built on that decision and allowed reservations to