Uppsatsmall doc

party from formulating a valid reservation. States were deemed to have authorised
the making of "compatible" reservations and to have accepted their validity in
advance. "It must be assumed that the contracting States are desirous of
preserving intact at least what is essential to the object of the Convention. Should
this desire be absent, it is quite clear that the Convention itself would be impaired
both in its principle and its application."
16
12
1951 ICJ Rep. at 22.
13
1951 ICJ Rep. at 23.
14
Ibid.
15
1951 ICJ Rep. at 26.
16
1951 ICJ Rep. at 27.

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12
In rejecting the notion that each state party must assent to a reservation, the Court
said this theory rested on a contractual concept of the absolute integrity of the
treaty as adopted. However, this contractual view could not prevail if it could be
established that the parties intended to admit reservations. This is how the Court
came to the conclusion that a more flexible application of the principle was proper
with respect to the Genocide Convention. Treaties of a legislative nature in which
widespread participation was intended and whose object is a humanitarian one
common to all the parties are not suited to rules on reservation that assume the
function of the instrument to be a contract. The dissenting judges feared that there
would be no legal certitude if every state could arrive at the conclusion most
convenient to itself. They anticipated that chaos would result from the fact that
that a treaty could enter partly between the objecting and the reserving parties,
and that some states might consider a reserving state a party while others do
not.
17
The most striking feature of the opinion was its enunciation of the “object and
purpose” test, or as it also is called, the 
compatibility
test. Simply stated, the
doctrine declared a reservation valid or invalid by reference to its compatibility
with the object and purposes of the treaty.
18
Many prominent writers were critical
of the Advisory Opinion. The GA nevertheless adopted a resolution requesting
that the Secretary-General conform with the opinion of the Court with respect to
the Genocide Convention, and that, in the future, he communicate the texts of
reservations and objections to all states concerned, "leaving it to each State to
draw legal consequences from such communications".
19
This flexible system eventually found its way into the Vienna Convention and
evolved partly in response to the increasing desire to establish a world order, and