WHAT LAW IS TO GOVERN THE DECISION? 7 



national standard of justice accepted and adopted iu states where they 

 are pronounced. So far as they are wrong they will ultimately be cor- 

 rected as nearer approaches are made to the truth. So also in inter- 

 national law, the actual practice of nations does not always conform to 

 the elevated precepts of the law of nature. In such eases, however, the 

 actual practice must be accepted as the rule. It is this which exhibits 

 what may be called the international standard of justice; that is tosay, 

 that standard upon which the nations of the world are agreed. As 

 municipal law embraces so much of natural justice, or the law of nature, 

 as the municipal society recognizes and enforces upon its members, so, 

 on the other hand, international law embraces so much of the same law 

 of nature as the society of nations recognizes and enforces upon its 

 members in their relations with each other. The Supreme Court of the 

 United States, speaking through its greatest Chief Justice, was obliged 

 to declare in a celebrated case that slavery, though contrary to the law 

 of nature, was not contrary to the lawof nations; and an English judge, 

 no less illustrious, was obliged to make a like declaration. 1 Perhaps 

 the same question would in the present more humane time be otherwise 

 determined. 



But, although the actual practice and usages of nations are the best 

 evidence of what is agreed upon as the law of nations, it is not the ouly 

 evidence. These prove what nations have in fact agreed to as binding- 

 law. But, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, nations are to 

 bepresumed to agree upon what natural and universal justice dictates. 

 It is upon the basis of this presumption that municipal law is from time 

 to time developed and enlarged by the decisions of judicial tribunals 

 and jurists which make up the unwritten municipal jurisprudence. 

 Sovereign states are presumed to have sanctioned as law the general 

 principles of justice, and this constitutes the authority of municipal 

 tribunals to declare the law in cases where legislation is silent. They 

 are not to conclude that no law exists in any particular case because it 

 has not been provided for in positive legislation. So also in interna- 

 tional law, if a case arises for which the practice and usages of nations 

 have furnished no rule, an international tribunal like the present is not 

 to infer that no rule exists. The consent of nations is to be presumed 

 in favor of the dictates of natural justice, and that source never fails 

 to supply a rule. 



If the foregoing observations are well founded, the law by which this 



•The Antelope 10, Wheaton's Reports, p. 120; The Louis, 2 Dods, 238. 



