Property-Protection Provisions in United States Commercial Treaties

Abstract

The matter of public international rules for the protection of private property rights has frequently received the attention of publicists, courts and treaty-makers. Some recent developments, bearing upon different aspects of the general subject, seem to attest its current and continuing importance. For example, the presentation to Congress of President Truman’s Point Four plan occasioned questions as to the guaranteeing of overseas investments of United States citizens. A few weeks later, at a meeting of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, a Belgian speaker and a representative of the International Chamber of Commerce emphasized the need for treating lenders according to certain standards of decency and fair play, and expressed the view that an economic climate encouraging to foreign investment was as far away as ever. On a somewhat broader plane, the appearance in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), but not in the more recently evolved International Covenant on Human Rights (1950), of provisions looking to the right of individuals to own property (“alone as well as in association with others”) and to be free from being arbitrarily deprived of it, raises questions as to whether the right of private property is not a basic “human” right.