of foreign companies; a few miscellaneous agreements such as that between the United States and Spain of 1901 concerning the authentication of signatures attached to letters rogatory exchanged between that country and Puerto Rico and the Philippine Islands, an exchange of notes between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics relating to the execution of letters rogatory, and treaties between the United States and Great Britain respecting Canada, and with Mexico, establishing commissions for the adjudication of matters relating to boundary waters and questions arising along the boundaries between the respective nations. This report is intended to provide a compendium of information as to existing treaty provisions, and the basis for a study and recommendation of possible provisions in future international agreements for the improvement of judicial cooperation.

Two reports of proof of foreign official records and documents were compiled by the staff and made available to the subcommittee of the Advisory Committee for Project 3. A preliminary suggestion for revision of Sections 3491 - 3494 of the Criminal Code providing for proof of foreign documents was also submitted.

After extensive research, Professor Schlesinger of the subcommittee for Project 3 submitted to his subcommittee a preliminary report proposing a new rule to replace that part of Rule 44 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure relating to proof of foreign official records. A preliminary report has also been submitted on another aspect of the subcommittee's work "Obtaining of Evidence from Foreign Countries for Use in the United States District Courts" which includes a proposed revision of Rule 28(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

A staff report entitled "The Taking of Voluntary Depositions in Japan", and copies of documents from the National Archives providing historical background for our present juridical relations with Japan have been sent to the Committee member in charge of Project I, "The Austrian and Japanese Pilot Study."

In addition to preparing the studies and memoranda mentioned above, the staff has: (1) prepared a bibliography of articles in legal periodicals, addresses, bar association reports and other material on international judicial assistance; (2) studied and translated certain foreign language publications on judicial assistance; (3) compiled a list of federal and state cases concerned with judicial assistance; (4) prepared a compilation of judicial assistance provisions in basic legislation of certain federal agencies, and studied the use made of such provisions.

The Administrator of the Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs, Department of State, has supplied to the Commission additional basic

information in the form of statistical summaries, country by country, of non-gratuitous services relating to taking of evidence which were performed at Foreign Service Posts during the fiscal years ended June 30, 1958 and June 30, 1959. The summaries provide an accurate index of the number of depositions taken in the various countries and therefore indicate to the Commission the areas to which its attention should be directed.

The Commission has received reports from the Office of the Judge Advocate General, Department of the Army, summarizing instances since 1955 in which foreign authorities have requested the assistance of the Office of the Judge Advocate General in serving documents and obtaining the testimony of witnesses. That Office has also sent the Commission reports pertaining to German and Italian laws in the field of international judicial assistance.

The Commission has in addition received from the various divisions of the Department of Justice reports prepared both in 1955 and 1959 on matters of international judicial assistance which have come to their attention. Numerous cases which turned on the obtaining of properly certified copies of foreign documents and their introduction into evidence, or the success or failure in obtaining testimony abroad, have been cited.

Committees to cooperate with the Commission have been appointed by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, the American Foreign Law Association and the Consular Law Society. The purpose of these committees is to gather information on iternational practice from the bar, and to solicit suggestions for its improvement and criticism of drafts prepared by the Commission. Organization of similar bar association committees in other metropolitan centers is planned.

V

The Program of the Commission for 1960 and 1961

The Commission, at its meeting on October 16, 1959, decided to extend its program to include a study of British law and practice, including British experience under their twenty-two bilateral treaties with civil law countries. This decision was prompted, in some measure, by the recent establishment of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, and the plan of the Section of International and Comparative Law of the American Bar Association for a symposium, in cooperation with the British Institute, on British judicial assistance at the 1960 annual meeting in Washington.

One of the objects of the British Institute, according to an announcement in the International and Comparative Law Quarterly, is to provide information about British law and practice in general for inquirers and visitors from foreign countries. It will also promote research on selected subjects. Thus it is intended that the Institute shall become in time the principal British organization for the encouragement of research and for exchange of views in the whole field of international and comparative law, and that it will be used, as a source of objective data by all those concerned -- lawyers, government officials, business concerns and others -- both in Great Britain and abroad.

Informal and tentative conversations with members of the Institute's Board of Management indicate a desire and readiness to cooperate with the Commission in a study of British-American procedures of judicial assistance. Since the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth countries, by their bilateral treaties, have successfully coordinated their common law practice with the practice of many civil law countries, such a cooperative effort should prove helpful.

The Commission also determined to extend its studies to Latin America. This followed a resolution by the Inter-American Juridical Committee at Rio de Janeiro in July, 1959, recommending that all the countries of the Organization of American States establish committees for the study of international judicial procedures and reply to a questionnaire on their practice to be circulated by the Pan American Union based on an extensive report on judicial assistance made by the Inter-American Juridical Committee in 1952. The Committee's resolution was largely prompted by the establishment in the United States of this Commission.