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Introduction, William W. Bishop, Jr.

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This issue of the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law is a symposium devoted to human rights aspects of the Helsinki Final Act. The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe was convened in Helsinki July 3, 1973. After sessions there and in Geneva, all European states, both Western and Eastern (except Albania), took part, as did also the United States and Canada. On August 1, 1975, the Final Act of the Conference was signed at Helsinki by thirty-five nations. Its provisions had been laboriously arrived at by consensus rather than by voting. Early pressures for such a conference had come …