Page 156 - The Arabian Gulf States_Neat

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94 THE LEGAL STATUS OF THE ARABIAN GULF .STATES
any disputed issue to judicial determination—then the requesting State
may be justified in declaring that it can no longer consider itself bound by
the treaty.1 1
Basic change in circumstances, or the rule rebus sic stantibus, have
also been accepted by many writers as a ground for unilateral de­
nunciation of treaties.2 But it appears that the normal practice of the
United Kingdom weighs greatly against unilateral abrogation, under
any circumstances, of a treaty of which she is a party. To this effect,
:
Lord McNair states:
!
The normal basis of approach adopted by the United Kingdom towards a
treaty is that it is intended to be of a perpetual duration and incapable of
unilateral termination, unless, expressly or by implication, the treaty con­
tains a right of a unilateral termination or some other provision for its
coming to an end. There is nothing judicially impossible in the existence of
!
a treaty creating obligations which are incapable of termination except by
i the agreement of all parties.3
When on 8 July 1947 Egypt presented a complaint to the Security
Council against the United Kingdom in which she appears to have
relied, though not specifically, on the doctrine rebus sic stantibus as a
basis for the termination of her treaty of 1936, the United Kingdom’s
reply to the complaint was no exception to the British normal practice,
explained above. Accordingly, replying to the Egyptian representa­
tive’s argument that the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 26 August 1936
‘cannot bind Egypt any longer, having outlived its purposes besides
being inconsistent with the Charter’, Sir Alexander Cadogan, for the
United Kingdom, stated:
. . . There is no decision of an international tribunal where this doctrine
has been applied in any remotely similar case, and the constant practice of
States has been to insist on the doctrine that a treaty can only be revised or
modified by the consent of the parties. The argument against the Treaty of
1936 on rebus sic stantibus lines would seem to have no legal foundation
whatsoever.4
It is noteworthy that the above principles of law regarding the
termination of treaties are applicable to relations among equally

1 Oppenheim, pp. 941-2.
* Ibid., pp. 938-9. ‘Almost all the theorists agree’, says Westlake, ‘that to many
treaties the tacit condition rebus sic stantibus is attached: they arc concluded in
and by reason of special circumstances, and when those circumstances disappear
there arises a right to have them rescinded.’ See Westlake, p. 295. For the views of
other writers on the doctrine of rebus sic stantibus, see Brierly, pp. 260, 263-4;
Schwarzenberger, A Manual of International Law, 4th cd., vol. 1 (1960), p. 157;
Hyde, vol. 2, p. 1524.
4 See^Briggs, Herbert W., ‘Rebus sic stantibus before the Security Council; The
Anglo-Egyptian Question’, A.J.I.L., 43 (1949), pp. 764-5.