INTERNATIONAL LAW. 'fu adopt !ten tham's terminology instead of the older and still common expression, 'Law of Nations,' 'Interna tional Law' is the of rules, whether Lased upon custom, convention, or common con sent, which tire acknowledged and accepted as binding modern civilized and independent nations in their nnitnal dealings.
The question wilt-tiler rules are law in the abstract and technical sense of the w4)1•11 is pore h• aeadeinic and has little practical importance; for in England and in the United States interna tional law is regarded as part of the common and munieipal laws of the respectilt• countries. Lords Talbot and expressly so held (Triopiet rs. Bath, I71;4, 3 Bur. I 4 7S1 ; Black stone in his Conini•utarics published a year later laid (Imvn the doctrine in unmistakable terms: law of nations . . . is here adopted to its full extent by the law and is 111111 to he a part of the law of the land the Constitution of the United Stales acknowledged it in giving Congress power to punish "olTenses against the law of for nati4nis pun ish of domestic., not of foreign law, and the Supreme C'otirt has held in a east. arising out of the recent Spanish-.\ nicrican ll'ar that the law of nations is nothing more nor less than a branell of our municipal law: "International law is part of our law, and must be and administered by the courts of justice of ap propriate as often mieslions of right depending upon it are duly presented for their determination. For this purpose, where there is no treaty. and no controlling executive or legislative act or judicial decision, resort must he had to the customs and usages of civilized na tions; and, as evidence of these, to tla• works of jurists and eammentators, who, by years of labor, research, and experience, have made them selves peculiarly WPII acquainted with the sub jects of which they treat. Such works are re sorted to by judicial tribunals, not for the specu lations of their authors concerning what the law ought to he, hut for trustworthy evidence of what the law really is." (Paquette Habana, 1899, 175 U. S. 677.) It would appear, therefore, that as far as the United States is concerned, international law rests upon the following bases: (1) treaties; (2) acts of the executive in international mat ters; (3) acts of Congress; (4) judicial decisions of American and prize courts; (5) customs and usages of civilized nations. Text-books are not
law per se, but evidence of the law, so that Lord Salisbury's sarcasm—"lidernational law . . . depends generally on the prejudices of the writers of text-books"—loses much of its point in this country. The prejudices of the writers should he discarded, hut their texts cannot be over looked.
Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), in his De Jure Belli oe Pacis Libri Trcs (1625), is the father of the science of international law in the same way, and in a larger sense than Adam Smith, by his Wealth of Nations (1776), is the creator of the modern science of political economy. The jug treble of the earlier Roman law. regulating the formal intercourse between Rome and other na tions. might have produced a system of inter national law if Rome had not made one nation of the world. But as Mr. Robertson says: "Positive international law does not in fact conic into existence until the era of Grotius, al though usages of international intercourse must at all times have existed." Among the most famous followers of Grotius are Puffendorf (1632-94); Wolf (1679-1754); Vattel (1714 67) ; and the Dutch jurist Bynkershoek (1673 1743), whose authority is second only to that of Grotius. In America the most illustrious names are Kent (1763-1847) ; Wheaton (1785-1848) ; llalleck (1817-72) ; Woolsey (1801-S9) ; Dana (1815-82), whose notes to Wheaton's classic 'Ele ments of International Law' are invaluable: Wharton (1820-99) ; and Moore (1861-1. (For the writers on international law and a criticism of their work, see Rivier's sketch in Holtzen do•ff's Handbuch des Valkc.rreehts, French trans..
i., pp. 351-494.) To these illustrious names should be added those of the judges Sir Leoline Jenkins (1623-85) and Lord Stowell (1745-1836) in England, Marshall (1755-1835) and Story (1779-1845) in the United States.