Last updated 09/07/24: Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website: https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 April 2017
International law, whether customary or conventional, has been assumed to rest ultimately on moral or non-physical sanctions. In speaking of the “sanctity” of international agreements more often than of the “sanctions” upon which their effectiveness may depend, we have placed ultimate faith in the non-coercive means of giving effect to international law and international obligations. The practice of states, however, shows a striking number of instances in which material self-help sanctions have been exercised in time of peace to give effect to international rights.
1 The term “reprisals” occurs first in juristic writings of the 13th century. Maccoby,Cambridge L. J., 1924-26, Vol. 2, p. 60. In its restricted legal sense it is not found in the codes of Roman law nor did the Romans follow the practice. Bynkershoek, Quaestiones Juris Publici, pp. 182-184.
2 See especially Bartolus of Saxoferrato, Consilia, quaestiones et tractatus;tractatus represaliarum,written 1354, pub. 1588; De Legnano, De Bello, de Represaliis, et de Duello,written 1360; trans.T. E. Holland, ed. 1917.
3 See Nys, Les Origines, p. 63; Nys, Le Droit Int., p. 584; Mas Latrie, Du Droit de Marqueou Droit de Reprisailles au Moyen-Age, pp. 5, 8; Grotius, De Jure Belli ac Pads, Bk. 3, Ch. 2, sec. 2; Vattel, Law of Nations, Bk. 2, sees. 71-77, 344; Molloy, De Jure Maritimo, pp. 25, 26; Trelles, Academie de Droit International, Vol. 17, Pt. 2, p. 310.
4 Maccoby, p. 65.
5 Vattel, Bk. 2, sec. 342; Maccoby, p. 67; de Martens, Essai concernant les Armateurs. Vattel insisted that reprisals were limited to state action taken to enforce pecuniary claims. Examples of what are now termed public reprisals Vattel observed in the 18th century and referred to as “pretended reprisals.” The whole conception of modern reprisals as the use of force short of war, by the state, to secure redress for an international delinquency waslost to him by his insistence upon the narrower basis of a casus peculiar to mediaeval private reprisals. See Westlake, Collected Papers, pp. 593-594.
6 A copy is found in Ortolan,Diplomatie de la Mer, I, App. J; also, Piore, Vol. 2, p. 665.
7 Wheaton (Lawrence), Elements of International Law, p. 509, note 168; Ducrocq,ReprSsailles en temps de paix, p. 26. In 1857 a curious brief was submitted to the United States Secretary of State inbehalf of P. S. Shelton el al, who petitioned for a letter of request preliminary to a petition for permission to execute special reprisals against Venezuela. The grievance was based on dispossession of the petitioners of asmall guano island (Aves) in the Caribbean by a Venezuelan naval force. To the petitioners “one of the strongest reasons demanding the recognition of the law of special reprisals” was that “claimants would not be left to the mercy of ignorant, lazy, inefficient… diplomatic officials…”It would also save correspondence!“The idea of this great principle having become ‘obsolete’ is perfectly absurd. Principles never die.” Sen.Doc, Vol. 4, No. 10, 2nd sess., 36 Cong. (1860-61). No action was taken. There is no example of special reprisals in thehistory of the United States. Moore, Digest of International Law, Vol. 7, pp. 122-123.
8 Receuil de Traités, D'Hauterive et de Cussy, Art. 3, Part 1, Vol. 2, p. 89.The French Penal Code (1900) in Art. 85 makes an indirect reference to reprisals: “Quiconque sera, par des actes non approuvés par le gouvemement, expose des frangais á éprouver des reprisaiUes sera puni du banissement.” Ducrocq, p. 25.
9 Borcbard, Limitations on Coercive Protection, this JOURNAL, Vol. 21 (1927), p. 303.
10 De Lapradelle and Politis, Receuil des Arbitrages internationaux, Vol. 1, p.109, Note Dodrinale, Affaire du Betsey.
11 It is generally taken for granted that the enforcement of the League sanctions would not automatically produce a state of war. League of Nations Official Journal (Council), 8th year, No. 7, July, 1927, pp. 834, 840; Miller, The Geneva Protocol, pp. 75, 91.
12 L. N. 0. J., 4th year, No. 11, Nov., 1923, p. 1314.
13 See U. S. For. Rel. (1897), p. 255, re pacific blockade of Crete; ibid. (1903), pp. 420, 423, re alleged pacific blockade of Venezuela.
14 This is illustrated by the course of events in 1901 when Prance occupied Mitylene. Before the seizure of the customs house, M. Delcassl indicated that the measures to follow would increase in stringency in direct proportion to the delay in the satisfaction of the French claims against Turkey. As the Sultan delayedsettlement, the monetary claims also increased. M. Delcasse1 explained that the “moral” stakes advanced with the delay. Moncharvilles, R.G.D.I.P., Vol. 9 (1902), pp. 677, 700.
15 Records of 2nd Assembly, pp. 453, 739-740.
