The Need for an International Legislative Drafting Bureau

Abstract

The next few years are likely to be of critical importance in the development of the technique of international legislation by means of multipartite agreements. The interruption of the normal rhythm of international legislative activity by the war, the need to revise a substantial proportion of the principal existing multipartite legislative instruments in the light of the new conditions precipitated by the war, and the wide range of problems not dealt with in such instruments hitherto which have now been thrust into the foreground, will combine to produce an intensification of international legislative activity comparable to that of the years immediately following the first world war. The first steps are already being taken by the formulation of plans for a wide range of new international organisations, and when the necessary constituent instruments have been framed the whole of the existing corpus of international legislation is likely to be progressively reconsidered over a period of years.