INTERNATIONAL LAW AND PEACE CONFERENCE. 83 



arbitration agreements, whether embodied in treaties or otherwise; 

 to it also will be sent the result of all special arbitrations here- 

 after resorted to, and in it will be deposited the papers, pleadings, 

 and other documents, and especially the decisions of the permanent 

 court, as well as those of any special courts which may hereafter 

 be created from time to time. These archives will thus furnish a 

 wealth of material not locked up or available only by jurists of the 

 particular state where they may happen to be situated, as has too 

 often been the case heretofore, but accessible alike to the great 

 text writers and commentators of all nations. The criticisms and 

 opinions of eminent text writers have heretofore been of great 

 value in the improvement of international law, and under these 

 new and more favorable conditions their influence should be even 

 more beneficial in the future. 



To the works of text writers will in future be added the able 

 discussions of counsel and the learned opinions of judges handed 

 down in writing, with the reasons upon which they are founded.* 

 Where rules and usages are becoming obsolete or obviously hostile 

 to the growth of opinion, international judges may feel themselves 

 bound for a time by them and give their decisions accordingly, but 

 they may embody in their written decisions an obiter dictum which 

 shall prove the death knell of the old rule and the establishment 

 of a healthier one. Many are the wholesome changes that have 

 thus been wrought in English " judge-made law " as the direct result 

 of learned and convincing obiter dicta. 



The interest which will thus be stimulated in the whole subject 

 of international law will promote its study in all nations. Hith- 

 erto this branch of legal education has been rather slighted; not 

 being regarded as essential to the ordinary practitioner, it has been 

 neglected for the petty provisions of some state code or involved 

 corporation law, but the influences already at work in favor of a 

 more thorough and scholarly study of this branch will be effectively 

 aided under the new conditions. 



Though the law of nations should be uniform in all countries, 

 a comparison of the leading works in different countries, English 

 and German for instance, will reveal many differences partly trace- 

 able to the particular system of law in which the author was 

 grounded, and in part to his peculiar " judicial instinct." It is 

 not often that one finds an English or American lawyer thoroughly 

 grounded in the Roman system and the modern Continental sys- 

 tems founded upon it; quite as rare is it to find a Continental law- 

 yer learned in the system of English jurisprudence. There have 



* For an admirable example, see the published proceedings of the Paris Tribunal in the 

 Venezuelan case. 



