FINAL ACT OF SECOND PAN AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC CONGRESS. 103 



In the next place, diplomatic incidents of an international character 

 are recommended for study and discussion, although they can not com- 

 pete with judgments of courts and holdings of arbitral tribunals and mixed 

 commissions, as they are too often the concessions of the weak to the 

 strong rather than the passionless application of the principles of justice. 

 Finally, the classics of international law are recommended, for the great 

 writers on international law have not only expounded the law of nations 

 but they have also made and enlarged the law which they professed to ex- 

 pound. By a study of their masterly productions, beginning with the 

 philosophers and canonists of the Middle Ages, including FRANCISCO 

 VICTORIA, AYALA, GENTIUS, and SUAREZ, the predecessors of GROTIUS, 

 the immortal three books on the right of war and peace by the illustrious 

 GROTIUS himself, and the works of his successors, we see how the little 

 stream, fed by many sources, has grown into a mighty torrent, colored 

 it may be by the soil over which it flows but reaching with irresistible 

 force the ocean. 



The Supreme Court of the United States, declared in the case of the 

 Paquete Habana (176 U. S., 677), decided in 1899, that "international 

 law is part of our law, and must be ascertained and administered by 

 the courts of justice of appropriate jurisdiction, as often as questions of 

 right depending upon it are duly presented for their determination." 

 The opinion, delivered by a very learned judge, the late Mr. Justice 

 Gray, then proceeded to enumerate the sources of authority as follows: 



For this purpose, where there is no treaty, and no controlling executive 

 or legislative act or judicial decision, resort must be had to the customs and 

 usages of civilized nations; and, as evidence of these, to the works of jurists 

 and commentators who, by years of labor, research and experience, have 

 made themselves peculiarly well acquainted with the subjects of which they 

 treat. Such works are resorted to by judicial tribunals, not for the specula- 

 tions of their authors concerning what the law ought to be, but for trust- 

 worthy evidence of what the law really is. 



Supplementing the enumeration of sources of authority which the 

 Congress ventured to make by the decision of the learned justice of the 

 Supreme Court in deciding the case of the Paquete Habana we have a firm 

 and a sure measure of international right and of international duty, and 

 of the means of ascertaining it in almost any case. 



The Congress, it will be recalled, recommended that particular stress 

 should be laid upon the positive nature of international law and the defi- 

 niteness of its rules. This recommendation appears in a slightly different 

 form in Section (c), where the Congress advises that the lines be clearly 

 drawn between the accepted rules of international law on the one hand 

 and questions of international policy on the other hand. 



