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The International Law of the Future
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2013
Extract
On February 28, 1942, a conference at Atlantic City was arranged by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to inaugurate discussions on the international law of the future. Since that time, a series of group conferences and smaller meetings have been held in various centers of the United States and Canada, at which nearly 200 men, chiefly Americans and Canadians, participated—judges, lawyers, professors, governmental officers, and men of special international experience. To assure continuity, a few persons—outstanding among them Judge Manley O. Hudson of the Harvard Law School and Professor P. E. Corbett of McGill University—were present at all the meetings, and a small committee prepared the different drafts.
The aim of these informal conferences, held over a period of nearly two years, was to arrive at a community of views; and this was achieved when a Statement, growing out of successive drafts, was subscribed to by some 150 of the persons who had participated in the discussions. This document, hitherto strictly confidential, has now been released for publication. Its contents are not to be taken, either in whole or in part, to represent the individual views of any particular person who participated in the discussions.
The Statement consists of six Postulates, ten Principles, and twenty-three Proposals, each explained by comment in the light of the history of international law over a period of a hundred years. The Postulates set forth the essential premises, the basic conceptions, of an effective international legal order. The Principles—so to speak, the heart of the Statement —are offered as a draft of a declaration which might be officially promulgated by the statesmen who will build the future peace. The Proposals are indications, suggestions for implementing the Principles, but are not presented as draft provisions for inclusion in an international instrument.
It is the object of the present article to summarize and comment upon the Statement's principal features.
- Type
- International Affairs
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © American Political Science Association 1944
References
1 The International Law of the Future; Postulates, Principles, and Proposals, published in the April, 1944, issues of the American Journal of International Law and International Conciliation.
2 Cf. Lange, Chr. L., Histoire de l'internationalisme (1919)Google Scholar; Meulen, J. Ter, Der Gedanke der internationalen Organisation in seiner Entwicklung, 1300–1889 (3 vols., The Hague, 1917, 1929, 1941)Google Scholar; Hemsleben, S. J., Plans for World Peace Through Sir Centuries (Chicago, 1942).Google Scholar
3 For a bibliography, cf. H. Aufricht, Bulletin of the Commission to Study the Organization of Peace, Vol. II, Nos. 5 and 6 (28 pp.). For a survey of the different proposals, see Millspaugh, A. C., Peace Plans and American Choice; The Pros and Cons of World Order (Washington, 1942)Google Scholar, and the excellent book by Corbett, P. E., Post-War Worlds (New York, 1942).Google Scholar
4 “Some Premises of Peace,” American Bar Association Journal (Nov., 1943), pp. 623–628, at p. 625.
5 Ibid., at p. 626.
6 On these problems, see Commission to Study the Organization of Peace, Second Report, “The Transitional Period” (New York, Feb., 1942, pp. 23).
7 Cf. on this point Kelsen, Hans, Law and Peace in International Relations (Cambridge, Mass., 1942), pp. 48–55, 82–122.Google Scholar
8 Cf. Wells, H. G., The New World Order (New York, 1940)Google Scholar; Fawcett, C. B., The Bases of a World Commonwealth (London, 1941)Google Scholar; Newfang, O., World Federation (New York, 1939)Google Scholar; the same, World Government (New York, 1942).
9 Principle 2.
10 Postulate 1.
11 Postulate 2.
12 Postulate 3.
13 Principle 1.
14 Principle 3.
15 Principle 4.
16 Principle 5.
17 Postulate 5.
18 Principle 6.
19 Cf. the dispute now more than a hundred years old between Great Britain and Argentina with regard to sovereignty over the Falkland Islands.
20 Principle 7.
21 Principle 8.
22 Principle 9.
23 Principle 10.
24 Cf. Kunz, Josef L., “The Law of Nations, Static and Dynamic,” American Journal of International Law, Vol. 27, pp. 630–650 (1933)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “The Problem of Revision in International Law,” ibid., Vol. 33, pp. 33–55 (1939).
25 Postulate 6.
26 Proposal 1, par. 1.
27 Proposal 1, par. 2.
28 Proposal 16.
29 Proposal 2.
30 Proposal 3.
31 Proposal 5.
32 Proposal 4.
33 Proposal 6.
34 Proposal 8.
35 Proposal 10.
36 Proposal 9.
37 Proposal 9, par. 1.
38 Proposal 23.
39 Proposal 21.
40 Proposal 22.
41 Proposal 11.
42 Proposal 14.
43 Proposal 15.
44 Proposal 7.
45 Proposal 2, par. 2.
46 Proposal 4.
47 Exceptions: matters of procedure and appointment (simple majority), two-thirds vote for proposals of revision.
48 “One of the institutions that should be established and which must be given efficiency is an International Court of Justice,” said Secretary of State Cordell Hull in a statement of July 23, 1942. A resolution of the committee of the American Bar Association on postwar international judicial organization, August 24, 1943, p. 14, lays down, “that a primary war and peace objective is the establishment and maintenance of an effective international peace among all nations based on law and the orderly administration of justice, and that the administration of international justice requires the organization of a judicial system of inter-related permanent international courts with obligatory jurisdiction.” This resolution has been adopted by the American Branch of the International Law Association, the Federal Bar Association, the American Society of International Law, and the House of Delegates of the American Bar Association. Cf. also Commission to Study the Organization of Peace, Preliminary Report, Nov., 1940, p. 12; and Inter-American Bar Association [American Journal of International Law, Vol. 27, pp. 106–115 (Jan., 1943)].Google Scholar
49 Proposal 13.
50 Referred to in the following as PCIJ.
51 Proposal 12.
52 Proposal 17.
53 Kelsen, Hans, Law and Peace in International Relations (Cambridge, Mass., 1942), pp. 145–168Google Scholar; “Compulsory Adjudication of International Disputes,” American Journal of International Law, Vol. 37, pp. 397–406 (July, 1943); “Peace Through Law,” Journal of Legal and Political Sociology, Vol. 2 (Oct., 1943), in Spanish translation: “La Paz por el Derecho,” in Revista del Colegio de Agobados de Buenos Aires, Vol. 21 (1943).Google Scholar
54 Proposal 17, par. 3.
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