164 WRIGHT— CONCLUSIVENESS OF THE ACTS 



he may not bind our government as a treaty would bind it, to a definition of 

 its rights, still in future discussions foreign Secretaries of other countries 

 are wont to look for support of their contentions to the declarations and 

 admissions of our Secretaries of State in other controversies as in a sense 

 binding upon us. There is thus much practical framing of our foreign 

 policies in the executive conduct of our foreign relations. 



"Whenever our American citizens have claims to present against a 

 foreign nation, they do it through the President by the State Department 

 and when foreign citizens have claims to present against us, they present 

 them through their diplomatic representatives to our State Department, 

 and the formulation and the discussion of the merits of those claims create 

 an important body of precedents in our foreign policy." 

 As President Taft points out, it is inevitable that the principle of 

 stare decisis will be of weight in the settlement of future contro- 

 versies and consequently that executive practice will in fact es- 

 tablish an interpretation of responsibilities from which it will be 

 difficult for future Presidents to escape. In theory, however, it 

 is believed that foreign nations can not hold the United States 

 absolutely bound by decisions or interpretations under authority of 

 the President alone, except witli reference to the specific contro- 

 versy under discussion.^* Thus explanatory or interpretive notes, 

 designed to control the general application of a treaty in the future, 

 are part of its making, whether they precede, accompany, or follow 

 exchange of ratifications and do not internationally bind the United 

 States unless foreign nations had reason to suppose that the full 

 treaty power had consented to them.^^ 



84 In the Pious Fund Arbitration Case (U. S. v. Mexico), 1903, the 

 court held that while the principle stare decisis was not wholly applicable to 

 arbitration, the principle of res adjtidicata was : 



" Considering that all the parts of the judgment or the decree con- 

 cerning the points debated in the litigation enlighten and mutually supple- 

 ment each other, and that they all serve to render precise the meaning and 

 the bearing of the dispositif (decisory part of the judgment) and to de- 

 termine the points upon which there is res judicata and which thereafter 

 can not be put in question ; 



" Considering that this rule applies not only to the judgments of tribunals 

 created by the State, but equally to arbitral sentences rendered within the 

 limits of the jurisdiction fixed by the compromise ; 



" Considering that this same principle should for a still stronger reason 

 be applied to international arbitration, etc." (Wilson, Hague Arbitration 

 Cases, Boston, 1915, p. 9.) 



85 The United States refused to consider itself bound by explanatory 

 notes exchanged prior to exchange of ratification of the Mexican peace treaty 

 of 1848 and the Clayton-Bulwer treaty of 1850 though Mexico and Great 



