This study makes clear the following three points. First, the consistently revised operational principles of the United Nations peacekeeping operations always applies in a form of non legally binding norms, which may function as the inherent elements to regulate the operations, and they are well established as international standards. Secondly, some of the principles of the UN peacekeeping would apply to the UN multinational military operations under the Chapter VII of the UN Charter within the framework of the UN peace operations. In other words, those multinational forces under the Chapter VII also would be governed by the operational non legally binding norms, the contents of which are very similar to the ones of the UN peacekeeping. Thirdly, the effective implementation of the UN peace operations requires the UN member states to import those operational non legally binding norms into their domestic legal systems, and this is usually done.

Through the four-years' joint and coordinated research work of Japanese scholars on the law of the sea and successive workshops on the law of the sea between Japanese and Chinese scholars, this research work has contributed to the identification and clarification of the contemporary issues relating to the interpretation and application of the UNCLOS and analysed various problems having arisen in the process of the implementation of the UNCLOS after its entry into force including issues concerning the demarcation between the continental shelf and the deep sea bed, definition of the island and rock, suppression of pirates, experimental whale catching, the claim of historic title over vast areas on the high seas etc. Through this research totally 61 articles and 3 books focusing the contemporary issues on the law of the sea has been published.

In this research, I confirm the fact that the United Nations has extended its own functions and powers for the international peace and security in facing new various crises: terrorism, nuclear or other arms proliferation, piracy and so on, and then consider the UN recent alternative centralized Chapter VII measures, under which the regional organizations or the coalitions of the willing UN member states have operated against new international threats. This research places these military activities properly and legally in the context of the UN system of international peace and security under UN Charter, and contributes to construct the theoretical and practical framework of the UN functions for strenghtening their legitimacy and effectiveness.

In terms of "juridictionalisation" of international law, this research focused on the international courts and tribunals, which are now expanding in international society in its number and quality. As a result, the following points have been clarified; (1) realisation of international law through litigation, (2) evolutive interpretation of treaties in litigation, (3) dispute settlement and realisation of interests by litigation, (4) creation of case law by a lot of cases and the expansion of foreseeability of law. Furthermore, by analysing the Whaling case between Australia and Japan, it has been clarified that the litigation theory is needed to be combined with the litigation strategy and diplomatic policy.

In the increasingly globalized international community, where no centralized legislature exists, more and more activities of private persons as well as States are gradually regulated by globalized norms. Such norms tend to be engendered through a network-type law-making process. The phenomenon is particularly conspicuous in international investment law, where a treaty-based arbitral tribunal often refers to and relies on decisions rendered by other arbitral tribunals established on other treaties that are irrelevant to the disputing parties of the case with which the tribunal deals. This process tends to engender norms generally applicable to investment disputes. In many fields other than investment law, one can observe a growing process through which general norms regulating private persons activities are generated. International "jurisprudence" plays an important role in this respect. It is becoming difficult to conceive domestic regulations without referring to global norms.

The year 2012 marked the twentieth anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS); however, international society has not only faced difficulties around the implementation, interpretation, and application of UNCLOS, but has also encountered issues that were not anticipated at the time of UNCLOS’ adoption in 1982. This research addresses this resulting “vacuum” in the law of the sea. Collaborating with scholars and diplomats from East Asia (China, Taiwan, and the ASEAN countries), we have published several journal articles and books, and have organized international workshops on key problems such as dispute settlement and maritime delimitation. This research project has also succeeded in establishing an international network of specialists in the field.

This study aims to analyze the United Nations functions for maintaining international peace and security, in particular the recent practice of the UN "robust" peacekeeping, of which activities are authorized under Chapter VII of the UN Charter by the UN Security Council, and also to consider the applicability of the law of international responsibility of international organization as well as of the concept of the accountability of international organization to the UN peace operations. The main result of this study is that the UN activities for peace and security have been diversified in response to the changing circumstances of international community after the end of the Cold War whereas they have been also restricted by certain rules of general international law, which may apply to the UN activities in general.

In this study, with the objective of analyzing the current situation and gaining a future perspective of the educational environment of international legal studies including public and private laws and politics, a survey was made of the overseas situation as well as the graduate and undergraduate educational environment in Japan. In addition, by asking for the cooperation of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, the possibility of coordination between theory and practice of international law was also considered. A symposium was held in the final year on the basis of these analyses and it was found that the influence of the reform of the judicial system in Japan is not limited to the law school but extends to institutions for training researchers. It was also pointed out that the globalization of university education is having an impact on the trends of foreign students from various Asian regions and that teaching of international law is also at an important crossroads.

For three plus additional one years, we have pioneered this challenging field with research meetings of and consultations among the researchers in charge. As regards the study in constitutionalism in particular, we believe that our group's research ignited the academic interest in it in Japan. Thus we believe that we have introduced a cutting-edge theory here, and lay the foundation to engage in research at the global level. We have also paved an innovative way as regards the methodology of combining constitutionalism and functionalism

Recently, the United Nations (UN) Peacekeeping Activities has been developed in the aspects of their contents as well as of their implementation. This study testifies that the UN Peacekeeping Operations have included various mandate for the peacebuilding after the civil wars or in the failed states, and that the UN has submitted some new operations as the way of collective security in international society, such as the collective responses towards the piracy. It also makes it clear that the richness of the UN Peacekeeping Activities has developed the ways of implementing these operations, like with the appearance of the "robust" peacekeeping or through the organic combinations between the UN and the Member States or the regional organizations.

Every year during the scientific research fund was provided, there had been several research group meetings and had several presentations and discussions on specific law of the sea issues. Those presentations have been published seratim in the Contemporary Law of the Sea Series. The title of the first volume is Historical Development of the Law of the Sea. Second one is The Influence of Landmark Cases in the Law of the Sea. The third is The Law of the Sea and Japan.

Interstitial norms function, behind the primary rules of international law, to regulate the normative relationship and the coordinated application of these rules, so that the international legal system positively responds to the changing societal needs. This study identified the key normative concepts, namely "l'etre situe" and "effectivite" as theoretical framework that will enable us to grasp the dynamism of international law claiming for its legality, legitimacy and effectiveness.

Last three years starting from 2005, this project has held plenary meeting twice a year and several research meeting. In this process, we have analyzed various problems existing in the implementation processes of institutions and rules protecting public interests of the international community and also considered how those problems have been dealt with from the viewpoints of how the measures to solve them are justified. In the final year of 2007, we held an international workshop on the Implementation of public interests of the international community, inviting Professor Karel Wellens of Nijmegen University, Dr Kern Alexander of Cambridge University, and Director Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger of the Centre for Sustainable Development in Canada as guest speakers. Professor Wellens and the Head Investigator have edited the all the papers submitted by the members of this project and guest speakers into a book consisting of 16 chapters entitled "Implementation of Rules Protecting Public Interests of the International Community: Towards Process-based Concepts of Effectiveness in International Law and submitted it to Cambridge University Press for publication.

The objective of the present research was to invite Shigeru Oda, former Judge of the International Court of Justice, and to study the process of how judgments of international tribunals are formed. In pursuit of this aim, through case studies, we have studied the procedure of the court from the “inside", so to speak, focusing on how the Judges perceived the context of the conflict, how the perception was maintained/modified by collegial deliberation, how this was reflected in the operative part of the judgment, and how this has lead the ICJ to a conclusion that would have a large possibility of substantially contributing to the settlement of the dispute. Moreover, we reached many findings and common understandings on how the arguments of the conflicting parties(arguments of Agents and Counsels) and the manner the judges digested them has influenced the preparation of the judgment in each cases. As of the present, we are preparing our contributions by reorganizing the result of our case studies according to topics in judicial procedure. A book with the provisional title of “The Law and Procedure of International Tribunals" is planned for publication this year, and the deadline for the contribution is set at July 30th of this year. The book will include a case-by-case analysis section that will briefly organize the result of the case studies, to provide greater understanding of the multifaceted aspects of the judgment formation processes of international tribunals. As byproducts of the study, much of the findings gained from the research activities of the study group have already been published as research presentations and articles by individual members.

In this research, firstly, the features of the "robust" peacekeeping operations and their effectiveness have been considered. The "robust" peacekeeping, which has appeared since the latter half of the 1990's, is permitted the limited use of force under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, moreover with the consents of the parties concerned. The result proves that the new peacekeeping operations may ensure the effectiveness of their mandate ; ceasefire monitoring, humanitarian assistance, rebuilding of the failed States and transitional governance, all of which the UN asks them to implement, especially with the actions under Chapter VII, while the successful achievements by these operations lead the UN to recover the legitimacy of such activities. This consideration shows also that the "robust" peacekeeping still relies on the "self-defence" principle and that this principle can be lawfully applied in the operations, not at variance with the actions under Chapter VII.
Secondly, the examinations of some recent disguised actions under Chapter VII far example, the Iraqi War in 2003 and the North Korea missile launch incident in 2006, confirm that the UN Member States, especially P5, have attached importance to the distinction between Chapter VII and non Chapter VII, and that the requirements of the actions under Chapter VII should be applied rigidly.
Finally, this research had planed at first to deal with the performance of the peacekeeping operations by some regional organizations, but in the course of this research period, the preliminary considerations have done only about the case of the UN peacekeeping in Sudan. The operations by the regional organizations and their relationship with the UN remain to be examined in the next research subjects.

This research tries to reexamine the law of treaties in the contemporary context. Recent developments, particularly those regarding reservations or interpretation, reveal the necessity to reconsider the very foundation of the law of treaties, i.e., voluntarism.
Sakamoto examined the evolution of treaty obligations through his research on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, with particular emphasis on the rules on treaty interpretation. Igarashi studied international legal issues related to the so-called post-war compensation and examined the evolution of interpretation of the Hague Convention and the Hague Regulation as well as the San Francisco Peace Treaty. Shibata, with his rich experience in practice in the fields, studied the influence exerted by treaty organs on the evolution of treaty interpretation as regards international environmental treaties, particularly the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal, and the Antarctic Treaty. Hamamoto studied the role of treaty organs and the evolution of treaty stipulations with regard to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Investment Agreements. Sakai took in charge of the law of international organizations, especially the law of the United Nations, and carried out case studies on recent peacekeeping operations.
The results of the research are essentially descriptions of relevant phenomena and the research does not involve an extensive theoretical analysis or an examination of background of these phenomena. However, the research is considered to have produced appreciable results, taking into account the fact that these phenomena have not been sufficiently described in a comprehensive manner.

During the Period of this Study Project, some recent cases of the UN peacekeeping operations-Mission des Nations Unies en Republique democratique du Congo (MONUC), United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), and Operation des Nations Unies en Cote d'Ivoire (ONUCI)-have been examined in detail. The investigation about MONUC, for example, follows that the United Nations has recognized such mandate of MONUC as a "robust" peacekeeping, and that it has never regarded the combination of the peacekeeping activities and the restricted measures under Chapter VII of the UN Charter as a contradiction of principles ; consent v. enforcement. This conclusion is also true of the cases of UNMIL and ONUCI. Thus, the United Nations has recently developed the practice of the "robust" peacekeeping with the Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which is not contrary to the operational principles of the UN peacekeeping. In the case of ONUCI, for example, the principle of consent among the parties concerned and the principle of impartiality are maintained, with an amended principle of use of force in self defense.
This Study Project deals with not only the case studies of the UN peacekeeping but also one of the UN peacekeeping operational principles - the principle of impartiality itself. This principle in the traditional peacekeeping was established in the context of the international circumstances at that time and due to the neutral character of the United Nations, and so the meaning of impartiality has been limited to the passive and neutral role. As the end of the Cold War has changed the international scene and pulled down the basis on which the principle of impartiality was maintained, however, it proves difficult to apply the original meaning of this principle to some cases. In the "robust" peacekeeping, the reality of impartiality has converted to the equal applicability of law enforcement to the all parties concerned on the basis of the respect of the Peace Accords, so that this principle has been adapted to the real activities of the recent UN peacekeeping.

This research project explores the much-discussed notion of humanitarian intervention. Although the notion consists of a wide variety of aspects, political, sociological, cultural, etc., we have limited our perspective to a strictly legal one.
Sakai analyses the notion of "humanitarian intervention by/through the United Nations and points out that this highly ambiguous notion may serve, unconsciously, as a formalistic and facile justification of use of force.
Nakamura examines the relationship between regional organizations and the United Nations. In the light of recent practice in which the Security Council hardly maintains its effective control on military operations exercised under its authority, he emphasizes the Security Council's primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.
Hamamoto inquires about State practice concerning humanitarian intervention without authorization by the Security Council and concludes that States rarely deny the legality of humanitarian intervention categorically but almost always question about the sincerity of "humanitarian" intention of intervening States.
Shibata, through his historical and doctrinal investigation, reveals Tabata Shigejiro's decisive role on "outlawing" intervention. He also suggests the possibility of a revival of Taoka Ryoichi's theory, which tends to "legalize" interventions in the face of the lack of an enforcement mechanism in the international community.
Nakai summarized the process of the development of international human rights law and its influence in the Japanese legal order.
Serita scrutinized international rules and systems of humanitarian assistance in the case of natural disaster, particularly through a detailed account of State practice concerning the 1995 Hanshin-Awaji Great Earthquake.

今年度は、ドイツ「国際共同体」理論の批判的検討に向けて2つの大きな柱に沿った研究を行った。第1の柱は、ドイツ国際法に関する文献内容を検討することにより、論者により様々に主張される「国際共同体」理論の内実を明らかにし、その整理を行うというものである。第2の柱は、国連安保理の活動の展開をフォローし、特に「国際共同体」理論において執行機能とみなされている国連憲章第7章に基づく行動の最近の動向を体系的に整理することであった。
第1の柱については、ドイツの国際法学者を中心に行われている「国際共同体」理論に関する研究業績の収集とその内容理解・咀嚼に努めた。その結果として明らかにされたことは、「国際共同体」理論においては国際社会における法規範の性格付けに特有のものがあるということである。従来、強行規範や国際犯罪概念が国際社会の性質の展開を表す規範的概念ととらえられてきたが、「共同体」の根幹に関わる規則を特にカテゴライズする傾向がこの理論の主唱者に共通のものとなっている。この点を別の角度から指摘して、「国連国際法委員会における「国家の国際犯罪」概念の取扱いについて」(国際協力論集第7巻1号)を公表した。
第2の柱について次のような新たな知見を得た。すなわち、1995年以降、安保理の実行において多国籍軍を中心とした憲章第7章の行動が増加しているとともに、その活動内容が法執行という性質を有するというよりも、人道的活動の軍事的支援や国際機関の要員警護、治安維持活動など従来のPKOが行っていたような役割を演じるようになっているということである。この点は、その一部が「中央アフリカ共和国と国際連合ーMISABからMINURCAへー」(国際協力論集第7巻2号)で公表され、続いて「アルバニア多国籍保護軍について」(国際協力論集第8巻1号)でも明らかにされる予定である。

The International Community in the post-cold-war era needs a new international order, in which the U.N.will play a crucial role for international peace and security. However, a certain gap may be recognized between the practice of the U.N.in the cold-war era and the role which will be expected and realizable after the cold-war. The fact is that a complex of collective security and peace-keeping has been taken in recent cases, like Iraq-Kweit conflict, Ex-Yugoslavia case or Somalia. We examined new developements fo peace function of the U.N., focussing on the interrelationship between collective security and peace-keeping.
IDA's research began with re-evaluation of the U.N.practice in collective security and peace-keeping as a whole, so as to draw some limits and problems lying on the edge of the theoretical framework of collective security and its practice. He also analyzed the draft articles of Statute of the International Criminal Court. SAKAI tried a precise analysis of various peace-keeping operations taken after 1989 and pointed out some important evolutions of traditional principles of peace-keeping ; (1) lack of consent, (2) ambiguity of control, (3) expansion of competence and (4) loose limit of the use of force for self-defense.