SECTION A INTERNATIONAL LAW 



(Hall 14, September 22, 10 a. m.) 



CHAIRMAN: PROFESSOR JAMES B. SCOTT, Columbia University. 



SPEAKERS: PROFESSOR HENRI LA FONTAINE, Member of the Senate, Brussels, 



Belgium. 



PROFESSOR CHARLES NOBLE GREGORY, University of Iowa. 

 COUNT ALBERT APPONYI, Hungary. 



SECRETARY: ASSISTANT PROFESSOR WILLIAM C. DENNIS, Leland Stanford Jr. 

 University. 



THE LEGAL NATURE OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 1 



BY JAMES BROWN SCOTT, A.M., J.U.D. 2 



ASSEMBLED as we are to discuss various phases of international 

 law, we naturally assume its existence, and we need no argument 

 to convince us that as international law has the force of law, it is 

 and must be law. To state the case is to prove it; yet the legal 

 nature of international law has been seriously questioned and de- 

 nied by a few Continental jurists and by the analytical school of 

 English jurisprudence. 



The law of nations, it is insisted, cannot be law in the technical 

 sense, for law is a rule of civil conduct prescribed and enforced by 

 a superior. The rule of law contemplated in the definition must, it 

 is said, be certain, precise, and universal in its application within 

 the given jurisdiction. Tried by this standard, even municipal law 

 fails, because it is anything but certain and precise except in rare 

 instances. The existence of courts of appeal negatives the idea of 

 certainty and precision. If it be admitted that the law of nations 

 is still less certain, is less precise, that means only that international 

 law is less perfect than municipal law, but imperfect law is never- 

 theless law. The universality of international law appears from its 

 name, and the common law of nations is a fact, not a phrase or 

 myth. 



In the next place, even admitting the existence of an ill-defined 

 law of nations, still there is, it is said, no supreme court of nations 



1 The Chairman of this Section, Professor James Brown Scott, of Columbia 

 University (recently appointed Solicitor for the Department of State, Washing- 

 ton), opened the proceedings by an introductory address so comprehensive and 

 so valuable to the general treatment of the subject, and so in keeping with the 

 theory underlying the sectional work of our Congress, that it is reprinted in full. 



2 For a more elaborate treatment of the same subject, see two articles by the 

 present writer in the Columbia Law Review for June, 1904, and February, 1905. 



