(02 FINAL A.CT OF SECOND PAN AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC CONGRESS. 



The Congress was exceedingly anxious that international law should not 

 be studied as an abstract system of rights and duties, but that it should 

 take note of the concrete facts of international experience. It therefore 

 recommended in Section (6) that the widest possible use be made of 

 actual cases and incidents, in order that the positive character of inter- 

 national law be demonstrated, and that it be held up as the measure 

 of international right and of international duty. It appreciated that 

 the enthusiasm of the students should be aroused and that their interest 

 could best be sustained if they dealt with actual not with hypothetical 

 cases, and if they saw that they were dealing with -a practical not with 

 a theoretical science. . It was felt that such a point of approach was cal- 

 culated to lend dignity to the subject and to stimulate and to maintain 

 the interest of the student. 



The Congress, advocating the concrete, dealt in the concrete, and speci- 

 fied the sources which should be used in order to create and to stimulate 

 interest, and which it ventured to call the ultimate sources of authority. 

 In the first place, it called attention to the judgments of courts and to 

 sentences of arbitral tribunals, and although judgments of courts and 

 arbitral awards are not usually given the first place among the sources 

 of international law, it is believed that the Congress was right in assigning 

 them this unusual rank, because the judgment of the court is decided by 

 professional judges without interest in the subject in dispute and accord- 

 ing to principles of law which have stood the test of time ; and in the same 

 way, although perhaps in a lesser degree, the award of arbitral tribunals and 

 of mixed commissions are the holdings of persons of different countries, 

 and the decision is reached at least by a majority of disinterested per- 

 sons, bringing to the performance of their task an international outlook. 

 The. same can not be said of diplomatic incidents, which figure so promi- 

 nently among the sources and which are often the concessions of the 

 weak to the strong, rather than the passionless application of principles of 

 justice. They can not, however, be ignored, for, right or wrong, they 

 are milestones in the evolution of international law. 



In the next place, treaties, protocols, acts and declarations of epoch- 

 making congresses are recommended as a source of authority and as a 

 means of illustration. . Naturally the congresses mentioned are those of 

 Westphalia, Vienna and Paris, and it is especially encouraging to observe 

 that a Congress composed of American delegates ventured to proclaim 

 The Hague Conferences as sources of international law and to confess 

 their faith in them at a time when many partisans of international 

 organization are discouraged at the present and despondent of the future. 



