| The present Constitution, adopted by the 1992 Genoa Assembly, was intended to complete the restructuring of the CMI. The number of Vice-Presidents was set at 2; they were given constitutional duties and made members of the Executive Council. The office of Executive Councillor was established, and the number of councillors increased to 8 with criteria for election which strive to ensure broad geographical representation as well as representation of the various legal systems. The title of the Secretary-General (Administrative) was changed to Administrator, and the Immediate Past President was given a constitutional role. All officers were given 4-year terms of office, but these were made staggered terms for the Vice-Presidents and Executive Councillors in order to avoid the election of an entire bureau at the same time. A finite measure was adopted for the terms in office that could be served by the President and Vice-Presidents as well as the Executive Councillors. Finally, an attempt was made to deal in a firm manner with the problem of chronic arrears of contributions; this has had some success but does not by itself provide a complete answer to the problem.
The new Constitution also created two new categories of membership and clarified a third. The clarification is the category of Consultative Member, which is designed to bring the CMI into closer working relationships with other international organisations; currently the offer of Consultative Membership has been extended to 21 organisations, 6 of which are inter-governmental in character. The new categories are those of Provisional Member for individuals in countries where the formation of an NMA is underway but not complete, and Member Honoris Causa in recognition of outstanding service to the Comité. Over the years a number of extraordinary honours have also been conferred by the Comité, including the award of the CMI Gold Medal to Arthur Boal and Henri Voet, and the title of Honorary President for Francesco Berlingieri and of Honorary Vice-President for 10 others. The first Member Honoris Causa, elected in 1996, was William Birch Reynardson.
A few structural matters remain to be dealt with. One is the limitation on numbers of Titulary Members (at present 21 per NMA), which in its present formulation is a relic from the structure established nearly a century ago. Another is the need to promote formation of active, democratic and financially responsible regional member associations in lieu of the larger numbers of individual NMAs which have small memberships apparently incapable of meeting their financial obligations, however modest these are on the relative scale of contributions.
It is not only the structure of the Comité that has changed markedly in the post-war era. With the formation of the Legal Committee of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in 1968 following the TORREY CANYON wreck and resulting pollution, the IMO began to take over from the Government of Belgium the role of organising diplomatic conferences in the field of maritime law. This by no means brought the preparatory role of the CMI to an end, yet even today it is not generally appreciated that the International Sub-Committees and subsequent Conferences of the Comité have done the initial drafting of every convention considered by the IMO Legal Committee except the 1969 Intervention Convention and 1973 Protocol and the 1996 HNS Convention. Of these three, the first two deal with public international law and the last was worked upon by the Legal Committee at varying levels of intensity for more than 14 years, resulting along the way in the ignominious failure of the 1984 diplomatic conference. The Comité has subsequently drafted conventions for consideration and adoption jointly by IMO and UNCTAD (the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development), including the 1994 International Convention on Maritime Liens and Mortgages, and the draft International Convention Relating to the Arrest of Sea-Going Ships which is currently nearing the end of the preparatory stage.
In addition to its continuing work on maritime conventions, the CMI is involved in the formation and maintenance of codes of maritime and related commercial practice. In 1990 the CMI adopted uniform rules for Seawaybills, and for most of its existence the Comité has been custodian of the York-Antwerp Rules for adjustment of general average, which were recently revised by the CMI at its 35th International Conference in Sydney in 1994. The Comité is currently working with UNCITRAL (the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law) on standards for electronic document interchange (EDI) which comprehend the 'electronic bill of lading'. An extremely interesting current prospect is the possibility that the CMI might co-ordinate the work of a number of non-governmental international organisations in a study for UNCITRAL of the issues involved in structuring a comprehensive convention on maritime transport which could have a scope far beyond that of any of the past conventions. The work done under CMI co-ordination since 1992 with regard to Classification Societies could provide a modus operandi for the study of issues in maritime transport.
Until recently the CMI's activities were constitutionally focused upon private law; the previous (1972) Constitution declared the object of the Comité to be the unification of maritime "and commercial law, maritime customs, usages and practices". In view of the growing involvement of the CMI in questions of public law – and the increasing blend of private and public law issues in single conventions – the 1992 Constitution broadens the Comité's scope of activity to cover "maritime law in all its aspects." This has proven currently applicable in the context of oceans law, with the CMI’s work on the legal status of offshore mobile craft involved in exploration and production on the high seas.
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