iUN IG 1916 



SYMPOSIUM ON INTERNATIONAL LAW: ITS ORIGIN, 

 OBLIGATION, AND FUTURE. 



{Read April 15, 1916.) 

 I. 



OUTLINE. 



By JOHN BASSETT MOORE, LL.D. 



I. Origin. — International law, like all other kinds of law, 

 originated in the necessities of intercourse between human beings. 

 Just as rules developed for the regulation of life within individual 

 groups, so, as groups became permanent and were transformed into 

 states, rules developed for the regulation of their intercourse with 

 one another. The system thus gradually formed was not artificial 

 in any sense other than that in which all legal systems are artificial. 

 Regulation is just as essential to the relations between groups of 

 men as it is to the relations between individual men. 



In spite of the fact that it was formerly the fashion of writers 

 to say that the law of nations, or international law, was altogether of 

 modern origin, the recent researches of scholars have tended more 

 and more to disclose the existence of well-defined rules for the 

 regulation of international intercourse among the ancients. There 

 existed, for example, among the Greeks and the Romans, a large 

 body of customary law governing their intercourse with aliens and 

 with alien states. Among the Greek states themselves, there was a 

 large body of usages in accordance with which their relations were 

 conducted. The judicial settlement of disputes between them, by 

 means of arbitration, was carried to a very high point and was at- 

 tended with a large measure of success. Within the past twenty 

 years, much light has been thrown on this subject by the study of 

 inscriptions, which has conclusively demonstrated as clear and pre- 

 cise an application of the judicial method to the settlement of dis- 



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