International law

“ Since the Law of Nations is based on the common consent of individual States, and not of individual human beings, States solely and exclusively are the subjects of International Law. This means that the Law of Nations is a law for the international conduct of States, and not of their citizens. ”

“ The result is that cases submitted to mere arbitration, without the backing of an adequate international law, have frequently resulted in decisions which meant nothing more nor less than a mere compromise, unsatisfactory to both parties and yet accepted in the name of peace rather than in the name of justice. The world court of the future will administer an international law created and acknowledged by all nations. ”

“ There is only this difference, that the law of nations regulates public interests, while the private international law is virtually identical with the civil law of each state; and only occupies itself with private interests. ”

“ Since International Law is a law between States only and exclusively, no rules of International Law can exist which prohibit private individuals from taking up arms and committing hostilities against the enemy. ”

“ For how could International Law, which is a law between States, give rights to individuals concerning their relations to a State? What the Law of Nations really does concerning individuals, is to impose the duty upon all the members of the Family of Nations to grant certain privileges to such foreign heads of States and diplomatic envoys, and certain rights to such foreign citizens as are on their territory. ”

“ At present, international affairs are regulated by the principle that a nation must not intervene unless its interests are involved: diplomatic usage forbids intervention for the mere maintenance of international law. ”

“ I cannot subscribe to the perverted reasoning that society may advance and strengthen the rule of law by the expenditure of morally innocent lives but that progress in the law may never be made at the price of morally guilty lives.
It is true, of course, that we have no judicial precedent for the Charter. But International Law is more than a scholarly collection of abstract and immutable principles. It is an outgrowth of treaties and agreements between nations and of accepted customs. ”

“ We have as clear an interest in international law, as individuals have in the laws of society.
But apart from the soundness of the policy, on the ground of direct interest, we have, Sir, a duty connected with this subject, which I trust we are willing to perform. What do we not owe to the cause of civil and religious liberty? to the principle of lawful resistance? to the principle that society has a right to partake in its own government? ”

“ Thus, an examination of the fundamental character of international law does not lead us to the conclusion that by its very nature only a State can be the subject of rights in international law.
(3) Can, act the contrary, an individual always be subject of rights in international law? The question of an individual being a subject of international law arises when international law (mainly treaties) prescribes rights and duties for an individual. ”

“ At the beginning of the twentieth century, civilized nations acknowledge certain rules of national conduct called international law, but at the end of the eighteenth nothing of the kind had any real weight in regulating international affairs. ”

“ In the absence of any central authority, the only sanction behind the code of rules established by custom or defined in treaties, known as “international law,” is the capacity of the powers to hold each other in check. ”

“ Unless we are prepared to abandon every principle of growth for International Law, we cannot deny that our own day has the right to institute customs and to conclude agreements that will themselves become sources of a newer and strengthened Inter- national Law. International Law is not capable of development by the normal processes of legislation for there is no continuing international legislative authority. Innovations and revisions in International Law are brought about by the action of governments designed to meet a change in circumstances. ”

“ It is a well-known fact that a distinction has to be made between universal International Law, that is, rules to which every civilised State agrees, and general International Law, that is, rules to which only the greater number of States agree. Now it is quite certain that no universal International Law can be created by legislation to which not every member of the League of Nations has agreed. ”

“ Thus it is that, for the sake not only of international interests but of that true national welfare which depends upon the conservation of international interests, international law of an adequate sort must be created and must gain the respect and allegiance of all the nations that create it. ”

“ An international tribunal for Judicial Settlement, which we might call a World Supreme Court, established by the consent and coöperation of the great powers, could gradually erect a body of international law that would be both ideal and real. This is the only way in which international law will ever come to have any actual, positive, binding force. ”

“ No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired. ”

“ Therefore, I suggested, and I was the first person to demonstrate that in science, that the law of an individual state, that is to say the constitutional law, should never be described without also describing the limitations under international law. If we were to achieve the situation, if I may say so here, whereby everywhere in the world all young jurists from the very beginning would be accustomed to see the constitutional questions of their own country always in connection with those of international law, then a great deal would have been done to strengthen international law. ”

“ If the recognition of a de facto power were a duty imposed upon other nations by International Law, there would be no opportunity for objections founded on principle or policy. But there is no such duty. International Law leaves to each nation, precisely as the Municipal Law leaves to each citizen, what company to keep or what copartnership to form. ”

“ Nevertheless, questions of words are often questions of practical importance, and it is of undoubted importance to emphasise by a difference of nomenclature the difference between rules of international morality, by which, indeed, states are bound whether they have agreed to them or not, but which are uncertain and subject to endless dispute, and those rules of international law, which by means of international agreement have been defined and established and removed from the sphere of the discussions and insoluble doubts of moral casuistry. ”

“ Contrariwise, to refuse inquiry into the question of whether norms of the international community have been contravened by the act of state under review would seem to deny the existence or purport of such norms, a view that seems inconsistent with the role of international law in ordering the relations between nations. ”

“ In these circumstances, no question of international law, or of the extent of the authority of the United States in its international relations, is presented. International law is a part of our law and as such is the law of all States of the Union (The Paquete Habana, 175 U.S. 677, 700, 20 S.Ct. 290, 44 L.Ed. 320) , but it is a part of our law for the application of its own principles, and these are concerned with international rights and duties and not with domestic rights and duties. ”

“ The system of international law professes to be a code of rules which ought to govern, and in fact in a great degree does govern, the conduct of independent nations in their dealings with one another.... ”

“ This system we are not likely to abandon; and while we shall no farther recommend its adoption to other nations, in whole or in part, than it may recommend itself by its visible influence on our own growth and prosperity, we are, nevertheless, interested to resist the establishment of doctrines which deny the legality of its foundations. We stand as an equal among nations, claiming the full benefit of the established international law ”

“ That a system of law should be built up governing the international relations of the States of the world, by which their differences should be adjusted by the orderly processes of legality, excluding as a method of adjustment the chaos of war, may be admitted. ”

“ That the act of state doctrine is rooted in a well-established concept of international law is evidenced by the practice of other countries. These countries, without employing any act of state doctrine, afford substantial respect to acts of foreign states occurring within their territorial confines. [6] Our act of state doctrine, as formulated in past decisions of the Court, carries the territorial concept one step further. It precludes a challenge to the validity of foreign law on the ordinary conflict of laws ground of repugnancy to the public policy of the forum. ”

“ The error of our old political philosophy was that the state always looks in: it has obligations to its members, it has none to other states; it merely enters into agreements with them for mutual benefit thereby obtained. International law of the future must be based not on nations as “sovereigns” dealing with one another, but on nations as members of a society dealing with one another. ”

“ As might be guessed, international law is a matter of comparatively recent origin, and exists only among the most highly civilized nations. Not being the enactment of any general legislative body, having no courts competent to pass upon it nor executive to enforce its provisions, this law must be framed by agreement, and its carrying out must rest upon national good faith. ”

“ It is not likely that their decisions are in every case exactly right. It is to be hoped that after [Pg 35] the war, if we can get some fair security of future peace and establish some permanent and effective international tribunal, we may reach a definite code of international law which all nations can agree to uphold. ”

“ Court of Justice which could establish such responsibility and pronounce a fine or other punishment against a State for neglect of its international duties, State responsibility concerning international duties is nevertheless a legal responsibility. For a State cannot abolish or create new International Law in the same way as it can abolish or create new Municipal Law. ”

“ The law is therefore not a static thing but a dynamic growth adjusting itself to the necessities of society. It expresses the rules under which that society lives.
International Law has no different objective. But there is no international society of nations, and no international sovereign state. Consequently, there are no statutes enacted by an international legislature. More important, there are no international courts which constitute a compulsory forum for disputes. ”

“ The question as to the application of international law, therefore, belongs to a wider scope of the great problem which is called the problem of the norm concerning the application of law, or in other words in every legal system there is, by the side of the system which regulates the relations between human beings as such, a system which instructs the authorities as to which law they are to apply in each case. ”

“ A new State has the right to enter into the international association of States, and to be recognised by other powers when its existence cannot be put in doubt and is assured. It has the right because it exists, because international law unites existing States by common laws and principles based upon justice and humanity. ”

“ Our international rights will then wipe out national rights, in the proper sense of right, and will rule the nations precisely as the civil law of States rules the relations of their subjects among themselves. ”

“ There cannot be secure peace in the world, or any decision of international questions according to international law, until states are willing to part with their absolute sovereignty as regards their external relations, and to leave the decision in such matters to some international instrument of government. ”