The Sanction of International Law

1916 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 328-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amos J. Peaslee
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
Empty Term ◽  
The Law ◽  
Recent Editorial

In a recent editorial of one of the legal periodicals, the author quotes Alexander Hamilton’s statement in the Federalist, that “it is essential to the idea of law that it be attended with a sanction, or in other words, a penalty or punishment for disobedience,” and from this premise draws the following conclusion: “The law of nations, so-called, is a mere empty term or phrase, a high resounding name for something in and of itself vain and impotent.”To most authorities and students of international law, the author’s conclusion is somewhat astounding, but the fact that the statement could be made by a prominent legal editor, illustrates the extent of the present popular distrust of the science.

Hobbes among the Classic Jurists

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Boucher
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
Complete Identification ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Hedley Bull ◽  
Hans Morgenthau

The classic foundational status that Hobbes has been afforded by contemporary international relations theorists is largely the work of Hans Morgenthau, Martin Wight, and Hedley Bull. They were not unaware that they were to some extent creating a convenient fiction, an emblematic realist, a shorthand for all of the features encapsulated in the term. The detachment of international law from the law of nature by nineteenth-century positivists opened Hobbes up, even among international jurists, to be portrayed as almost exclusively a mechanistic theorist of absolute state sovereignty. If we are to endow him with a foundational place at all it is not because he was an uncompromising realist equating might with right, on the analogy of the state of nature, but instead to his complete identification of natural law with the law of nations. It was simply a matter of subject that distinguished them, the individual and the state.

The Use of Vattel in the American Law of Nations

2012 ◽  
Vol 106 (3) ◽  
pp. 547-571 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Richardson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Peace ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
American Law ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law ◽  
History Of International Law

Although careful scholarly treatment of the history of international law is now thriving, within U.S. courts that history now begins with one eighteenth-century treatise published in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, in 1758 and published in translation for modern readers under the aegis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 1916. This treatise is Emer de Vattel’s Droit des gens ou principes de la loi naturelle, appliqués à la conduite et aux affaires des nations et des souverains. My aim in this article is to appraise the elevation of Vattel to vaunted originalist heights in U.S. law. The claim that Vattel’s theory of the law of nations completely represents how the Founding Fathers (Founders) understood the law of nations should be rejected as a matter of history.

Book III Privileges and Immunities, 13 Privileges and Immunities of Diplomatic Missions

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Foakes Joanne ◽  
Denza Eileen
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Public International Law ◽  
Freedom Of Movement ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The Law ◽  
Special Protection

This chapter provides an overview of diplomatic privileges and immunities. Two fundamental rules of diplomatic law—that the person of the ambassador is inviolable and that a special protection must be given to the messages which are sent to and received from the ambassador’s sovereign—have been recognized from time immemorial among civilized States. The law of nations—now known as public international law—required States which accepted foreign diplomats to guarantee rights necessary to enable them to exercise their functions, including independence from local jurisdiction. It was important that ambassadors should not be afraid of traps or distracted by legal trickery. As such, the chapter discusses several areas where these privileges and immunities occur: the premises of the mission, the diplomatic asylum, the exemption of mission premises from taxation, the inviolability of mission archives, freedom of communications, the diplomatic bag, and freedom of movement.

The Puritan Cosmopolis

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nan Goodman
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Law And Literature ◽  
Significant Relation ◽  
Trade Routes ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The World ◽  
The Law

This book traces the emergence of a sense of kinship with and belonging to a larger, more inclusive world within the law and literature of late seventeenth-century Puritanism. Connected to this cosmopolitanism in part through travel, trade, and politics, late seventeenth-century Puritans, it is argued, were also thinking in terms that went beyond these parameters about what it meant to feel affiliated with people in remote places—of which the Ottoman Empire is the best, but not the only example—and to experience what Bruce Robbins calls “attachment at a distance.” In this way Puritan writers and readers were not simply learning about others but also cultivating an awareness of themselves as “stand[ing] in an ethically significant relation” to people all around the world. The underlying source of these cosmopolitan predilections was the law, specifically the law of nations, often considered the precursor to international law. Through the terms for sovereignty, obligation, and society made available by a turn toward the cosmopolitan within the law, the Puritans experimented with concepts of extended obligation and ideas about a society consisting of all humans, not just those living on certain trade routes or within certain foreign communities. In mapping out these thought experiments, The Puritan Cosmopolis uncovers Puritans who were reconceptualizing war, contemplating new ways of cultivating peace, and rewriting the rules for being Puritan by internalizing legal theories about living in a larger, more inclusive world.

The Theory of Recognition in Fieri (1958)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. H. Alexandrowicz
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Direct Influence ◽  
Historical Survey ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Formative Stage ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
New States ◽  
The Law

The historian of international law attempting an inquiry into the law of recognition of States and governments during its formative stage, particularly into eighteenth-century sources, is bound to consult the first historical survey of the literature of the law of nations by D. H. L. Ompteda, published in 1785. Ompteda referred to problems of recognition under the general heading of the fundamental right of nations to freedom and independence. All the essays he mentioned as being directly or indirectly relevant to problems of recognition of new States or rulers were written by comparatively unknown authors. Among them, Justi and Steck were perhaps the most active participants in the first attempts to formulate a theory of recognition. This chapter considers these early attempts, in particular the direct influence of Justi and Steck on Martens and Klueber, and through them on Henry Wheaton and some of the early nineteenth-century writers.

Some Problems in the History of the Law of Nations in Asia (1963)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. H. Alexandrowicz
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Law

This chapter considers problems in the study of the history of the law of nations in Asia. It argues that international lawyers have focused their attention on the legal aspects of contemporary problems of international relations and politics, and on the operation of tribunals and quasi-tribunals and the case law they produce. Writers of present day treatises of international law devote just a few introductory pages to the history of the subject and these short chapters are often based on similar introductions in nineteenth-century treatises. The chapter discusses some of the elements of legal change in which European–Asian relations played a significant role; the gradual elimination of the natural law outlook by growing European positivism; the principle of universality of the law of nations and the principle of identity of de facto and de jure State sovereignty; and the use of capitulations to delay the ‘entry’ of Asian States into the family of nations.

The Codification of International Law

1924 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 260-280
Author(s):  
James Brown Scott
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Strict Sense ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The Law ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
Correct Understanding

There are certain preliminary observations which should be made before we can take up the question of codifying international law or the method of codification, for without a correct understanding of certain matters, which may be considered fundamental, we may not know whether we are to deal with a system of law or a system of philosophy. As a matter of fact we are dealing with both, for law develops unconsciously or consciously in accordance with the principles of philosophy. If the law of nations is to be considered law in the strict sense of the word, we must deal with it as a system of law. If, on the other hand, it is a system of philosophy rather than of law, we must deal with it as philosophy, and the point of approach and the method of treatment will be different. But, above and beyond law, we are dealing with justice, and with those principles of justice, which, expressed in rules of law, we call the law of nations. Justice is the source; the principles of justice applicable to the conduct of nations constitute the law of nations, and the rules of law based upon these principles change with conditions, or to meet new conditions, and form the body and substance of international law at any given period.

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