Professor J. H. W. Verzijl died in 1987, at the age of 98. For some time before his death he had been working on the final, 11th, volume of his work on International Law in Historical Perspective, dealing with the law of maritime prize. At his death not much more than half of the volume existed in draft: that has now been supplemented and completed by his longstanding associates on the project, and now appears as the 11th volume of the work (the first 10 volumes having appeared between 1968 and 1979).

Conceived in 1940 during the author’s imprisonment in Buchenwald, International Law in Historical Perspective is a remarkable work of compilation, commentary and arrangement. It is like a fruit-cake prepared to entertain a large and expected company: sprawling, various, rich, rather uneven. It is a source as much as a statement, full of interesting items, thoroughly informed with a sense of the lengthy history of the subject. It may not always focus on the burning issue of the day, but is always worth consulting to see what can be gleaned.

This volume shares those characteristics, though in a somewhat muted way. The key issue of the law of prize is to what extent (if at all) it continues to exist, in the period of the Charter and the Security Council. The law of prize was developed during the period when war was licit, in order to strike a balance between the right of a belligerent to be a belligerent and the right of third parties not to be. It was one of the most detailed, intricately regulated areas of contemporary international law. It was, by any standard, law in force in its time. It also showed how national courts could, if they conceived themselves as performing an international function, play a central role in the development and application of international law, and how their doing so could nonetheless advance the interest of the forum. But in the