Essays in Honour of Judge Taslim Olawale Elias

• Author: P.K. Menon
• Position: Professor of Law University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus Barbados
• Pages: 458-461

BOOK REVIEWS

Essays in Honour of Judge

Taslim Olawale Elias

by

Emmanuel G. Bello

and

Bola A. Ajibola

[Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Martinus

Nijhoff,

Publishers, 1992: 898 pp.]

In the post-World War II period, the community of nations has

undergone many major changes which have a telling effect upon the

scope and nature of international law. One of the most important

changes after the establishment of the United Nations is the vast

horizontal expansion of the international society. Due to the sweeping

wave of the decolonization process, a large number of the countries

which had been considered as no more than 'objects' of international

law have now emerged as full members of the international society.

The emergence of newly independent states in Africa, Asia and the

Caribbean and their participation in international relations has broken

up the nature of international law which had in the past been the

exclusive preserve of

the

Western European powers forming the active

family of nations.

At present, the law has almost universal application. Membership of

the United Nations, which was founded in 1945 with 51 original

members, has already expanded to 184 and continues to expand by the

increasing desire of the remaining dependent territories to be

independent. The majority of the members of the United Nations are

neither European nor Western, but represent former colonies or

protectorates of the Western World with completely different social,

economic and cultural backgrounds and their own form of legal values.

In the last few decades, profound changes have taken place in the

scope and content of international law. Until recently, subjects of

international law were exclusively independent states. International

organizations were not in existence; individuals played only an

inconspicious part because international relations of the individual and

his contacts across the frontier, if

they

ever existed, were rudimentary.

Of

the

present day world society, however, international organization

is a characteristic feature. In several of the cities of the world, new