Book Reviews : Interpretation of Ambiguous Documents by International Administrative Tribunals. By ALAN H. SCHECHTER. (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1964. Pp. xviii, 183.)
| Published date | 01 March 1966 |
| Author | H. Paul Castleberry |
| Date | 01 March 1966 |
| DOI | 10.1177/106591296601900153 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
196
experience
of
Leninist
communism....&dquo;
The
National
Council
of
Corporations,
to
Salvadori,
&dquo;was
the
Fascist
counterpart
of
the
Communist
Gosplan....&dquo;
These
parallels
are
overdrawn.
First
of
all,
it
is
hard
to
imagine
what
&dquo;anti-
Marxist
socialism&dquo;
would
look
like.
Moreover,
the
socialist
element,
never
strong,
disappeared
as
Mussolini
came
under
the
sway
of
the
great
industrialists.
The
cor-
porate
state
in
its
actual
workings,
as
Salvemini
long
ago
showed,
changed
nothing
in
the
economy.
And
politically,
Italian
fascism
was
more
of
a
feudal
petty
despotism
than
a
monolithic
totalitarian
state.
As
Salvadori
himself
notes,
somewhat
para-
doxically :
&dquo;Politics
took
the
form
of
palace
intrigues
in
which
personalities
counted
more
than
principles.&dquo;
The
major
weakness
of
the
book,
however,
is
its
treatment
of
the
present
Italian
political
situation.
Paradoxical
statements
are
encountered
which
suggest
that
the
author
has
not
followed
the
course
of
Italian
politics
since
1945
as
closely
as
he
has
mastered
the
last
twenty
centuries.
One
reads
that
the
members
of
the
Italian
Social-
ist
party
(PSI),
part
of
the
government
since
1963,
are
&dquo;fellow-travelling
Socialists.&dquo;
The
Christian
Democratic
party
is
characterized
with
equal
ambiguity.
For
exam-
ple,
Salvadori
feels
that
it
is
&dquo;religious
discipline&dquo;
which
holds
the
ruling
party
to-
gether,
ignoring
completely
the
massive
role
of
state
patronage.
Finally,
Salvadori
writes
of
the
most
pragmatic
Communist
party
in
the
West:
&dquo;The
socialism of
most
Italian
Communist
intellectuals
is
of
the
utopian
variety.
It
implies
an
unshakable
faith
in
the
magic
virtues
of
the
final
goal -
integral
collectivism.&dquo;
It
is
not
clear
what
is
meant
by
&dquo;integral
collectivism,&dquo;
but
it
was
probably
more
comprehensible
in
1951,
when
Salvadori
first
used
the
phrase
in
his
Headline
Series
article
on
Italy,
than
today,
after
ten
years
of
revisionism
and
schism.
SIDNEY
TARROW
Yale
University
Interpretation
of
Ambiguous
Documents
by
International
Administrative
Tribunals.
By
ALAN
H.
SCHECHTER.
(New
York:
Frederick
A.
Praeger,
1964.
Pp.
xviii,
183.)
Since
the
end
of
World
War
II,
three
separate
administrative
tribunals
have
been
established
to
hear
disputes
between
international
organizations
and
their
em-
ployees,
viz.,
the
United
Nations
Administrative
Tribunal,
the
International
Labour
Organization
Administrative
Tribunals
(which
also
serves
some
of
the
Specialized
Agencies) ,
and
the
European
Court
of
Justice.
By
1961,
these
tribunals
had
decided
140
cases,
of
which
slightly
over
80
involved
questions
requiring
judicial
interpre-
tation
of
three
kinds
of
written
documents:
(1)
contracts;
(2)
staff
rules
and
regu-
lations ;
and
(3)
treaties.
The
purpose
of
Alan
Schechter’s
monograph
is
to
provide
&dquo;analyses
of
the
inter-
pretative
work&dquo;
of
these
tribunals
in
disposing
of
the
80
relevant
cases.
The
result
is
a
technical,
and
often
tedious,
study
that merits
the
attention
of
jurists,
scholars,
and
others
concerned
with
international
law
and
administration.
Its
utility
is
much
enhanced
by
extensive
documentation;
a
table
of
cases,
statutes,
and
treaties;
and
extensive
indexing.
A
50-page
appendix
contains
the
statutes
of
the
three
tribunals
that
are
the
objects
of
Schechter’s
research.
~~- -
;
- -- ’&dquo;
...~
~ ~.
~
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