Foreword: Law of the Sea Needs for the 1970's

These are exciting times for an ocean lawyer, for the Law of the Sea is in a period of reconstitution; simultaneously, the arena for remaking ocean law also could become the amphitheater for constitutive changes in our international system - or, as is predicted by a coterie of doomsayers, just another ring of an antedelvian circus. Looked at in this light, the following Law of the Seas Symposium can be judged, either by the degree to which its authors follow the "Rules of Play" for this constitutive period, or by the extent to which they meet the need for new debates before the next United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, presently scheduled for 1973.