International and Comparative Law Quarterly 

Abstract: THERE is a wide diversity in the instruments of so-called soft law which makes the generic term a misleading simplification.' Even a cursory examination of these diverse instruments inevitably exposes their many variables in form, language, subject matter, participants, addressees, purposes, follow-up and monitoring procedures. These variables, coupled with the inherent contradictions in any concept of soft law, highlight the challenges presented to the structure and substance of the traditional international legal order by the increasing use of soft law forms.

Abstract: Since the late 1940s, economic considerations relating to the globalisation of world markets have led an ever larger group of Western European countries to unite in the quest for a supra-national legal order which, in time, generated the European Community. Most of these countries' legal orders claim allegiance to what anglophones are fond of labelling the “civli law” tradition,1 although two common law jurisdictions joined the Community in the early 1970s. The European Community's early decision to promote economic integration (and, later, other types of integration) through harmonisation or unification has involved, at both Community and national levels (for the implementation of Community rules in the member States carries the adoption of national rules in all member States), a process of relentless “juridification”; law, in the guise of legislatively or judicially enacted rules, has assumed the role of a “steering medium”.2 This development was foreseeable: once the interaction among European legal systems had acted as a catalyst for the creation of a supra-system,3 the need to achieve reciprocal compatibility between the infra-systems and the supra-system naturally fostered the development of an extended network of interconnections (such as regulations and directives) which eventually raised the question of further legal integration in the form of a common law of Europe.4

Abstract: Corrections should be submitted in one of the working languages. They should be set forth in a memorandum and also incorporated in a copy of the record. They should be sent within one week of the date of this document to the Editing Unit, room E.4108, Palais des Nations, Geneva. Any corrections to the records of the public meetings of the Committee at this session will be consolidated in a single corrigendum, to be issued shortly after the end of the session.

Abstract: 'Every international convention must be deemed tacitly to refer to general principles of international law for all questions which it does not itself resolve in express terms and in a different way.'

Abstract: JUSTICE STEVENS delivered the opinion of the Court.* In 1995 Congress amended §43 of the Trademark Act of 1946, 15 U. S. C. §1125, to provide a remedy for the “dilution of famous marks.” 109 Stat. 985–986. That amendment, known as the Federal Trademark Dilution Act (FTDA), describes the factors that determine whether a mark is “distinctive and famous,” and defines the term “dilution” as “the lessening of the capacity of a famous mark to identify and distinguish goods or services.”1 The