Lola (175 U. S. 677), the same eminent judge, speaking for the court, declared: "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 citations of texts and cases might be greatly multiplied; but in view of these recent utterances of the Supreme Court it is deemed needless.

Like any other part of the common law of England and our own country, then, international law deserves a place in the curricula of our better law schools, unless it is obsolete or unimportant, and it is submitted that it is neither.

It is Not Obsolete.

That it is not obsolete is proved by the cases already cited, several of them of recent date (their number might be much increased), by the constant discussion and publication upon the subject in this and other lands, as well as by the establishment and maintenance of important societies for the discussion, reform and establishment of just rules of international law.

These societies include many of the most eminent legal scholars, lawyers, judges and statesmen now living in their membership and active participation and control.

Among such organizations most worthy of note are the Institut de Droit International, organized at Ghent, in 1873, and composed of 120 members and associates chosen from the most distinguished publicists of the world in this department of law. The last meeting was held at Ghent in the past Autumn and the next is to be held at Florence in 1908.

Another is the International Law Association, having its principal office in London, organized in 1873, and largely

English in its membership, but of which many American lawyers, including this writer, are members. Its last meeting was held at Berlin in the Autumn of 1906, and its next will, it is hoped, be at Portland, Maine, in connection with the American Bar Association in August, 1907.

The last, I would mention, is the American Society of International Law, founded in 1906, at New York, of which Hon. Elihu Root, Secretary of State of the United States, is President, and Hon. Melville Fuller, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, is a vice president, and which already counts nearly 500 subscribing members.

Another evidence of the present vitality of this great branch of law is the large number of publications concerning it, and often dealing with its recent developments, which are constantly coming from the press.

Thus the writer can mention off-hand three volumes dealing with the questions. of international law arising out of the late Russo-Japanese war, "War and Neutrality in the Far East," by Mr. T. J. Lawrence, Lecturer in International Law at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich (1904), International Law as Interpreted During the Russo-Japanese War," by Messrs. F. E. Smith and N. W. Sibley (Boston, 1905), a work of some 500 pages, and a volume upon the same subject by Prof. A. S. Hershey, published in the present year. New Editions of Wheaton's and Hall's works upon International Law were published in 1904. International Law, a brief treatise by David J. Brewer, Assoc. Justice U. S. Sup. Ct., and Charles Henry Butler, U. S. Sup. Ct. Reporter, appeared in 1906.

And the monumental Digest of International Law published by the United States government, under the learned and judicious editorship of Hon. John

At Oxford University international law is taught by Prof. Thomas Erskine Holland, K. C., D. C. L., a scholar and publicist of world-wide reputation, and for the past nineteen years, Prof. John Westlake, K. C., LL. D., has with equal distinction filled a like chair at Cambridge University. In the Prospectus of In the Prospectus of Lectures provided by the Council of Legal Education, at the Inns of Court, London, for the Hilary Educational Term, 1907, we find that Mr. J. Pawley Bates, Reader in International Law, will continue his course of lectures on the subject, dealing with "the Laws of War and Neutrality."

Harvard University lists international law in her law school schedule for 2 hours a week during the third year. (It has however been announced as omitted in 1904-1905 and 1906-1907, doubtless on account of the absence of the incumbent of the chair on leave.)

Yale announces it for 2 hours a week for a semester under Prof. Woolsey, who

has inherited and maintained with undiminished luster a name highly honored in that noble branch of learning.

Columbia announces it for 2 hours a week through the year under Prof. J. B. Moore, one of the greatest living authorities and one who, since the publication of his Digest (and the death of Calvo), has, it is believed, no living rival in the amount of his publications on this topic, and no superior as to their scope and character.

Cornell University announces it for 2 hours throughout the year. Many of the lesser schools and most of the Western schools omit international law, but do not all omit it.

Chicago University lists it under Dr. Judson (lately chosen to be the head of the university). Indiana University lists it under Prof. Hershey. Washington University, St. Louis, names Prof. Finkelburg as lecturer on international law. The John Marshall School of Chicago names Hon. George Adams lecturer on international law.

Justice Brewer of the Supreme Court. of the United States gives a course in international law at the George Washington University of Washington, D. C.

In the law school of the State University of Iowa, under the writer, 52 hours of class work are given to international law in the first semester of the senior year. He finds the subject pursued with zeal and avidity and that numbers of students elect to write their final theses on topics chosen from it.

Collections of Cases.

In 1893 the late Dr. Freeman Snow published his well-known compilation, "Cases and Opinions on International Law with Notes and Syllabus." It was a valuable work quite widely adopted as a text-book. It covered 586 pages

and the table of cases lists 239 cases and opinions.

In 1902 Dr. James Brown Scott, now Solicitor for the State Department, published his "Cases on International Law," based on Dr. Snow's work. It is a volume of 961 pages, and the table of cases lists 965 cases, instead of 239.

Dr. Scott's book is now widely accepted as, it is believed, the most valuable collection of cases on this subject extant.

It aims to elucidate the topics considered by judicial decisions rather than departmental or diplomatic opinions and it is eminently successful in so doing.

Its added scope, size, and thoroughness illustrate the growth both in the mass of international decisions and in the interest and time given to the subject.

The writer begs to add that he has used it as a text with a considerable class for five years (ever since it appeared), replacing Dr. Snow's work, which he had before used, and that it has proved most satisfactory in all respects, and, as was to be hoped, a great advance upon the earlier work.

When the writer was making some research in certain questions of internationat law at the British Museum and Inns of Court a few years ago, he was interested to have the librarians produce as the last and best authority an American work, International Public Law, by Hon. Hannis Taylor, late Minister to Spain. He was glad, also, to reply that he already had that work on his own shelves. It is already a standard authority on both sides of the world, and one of the points which it maintains is that the formative period of international law has not ended. "It is a living organism, growing with the growth of nations," he says, "and as such it develops new rules to meet new conditions as they arise and of advancing civil

ization. Its formative period cannot end until it has evolved an international code, and an international tribunal to interpret it" (p. 72 and see p. 86). Therefore the study of international law today has a living interest, like that in the study of equity in Lord Hardwicke's time or the law merchant in the days of Lord Chief Justice Mansfield.

The Interest of the United States.

Our own country, especially as the result of her late war with Spain, and the new territories acquired, has greatly extended her international relations and responsibilities. Her possession of Hawaii, the Phillipines, Porto Rico, her interest in the Isthmian Canal, her participation in the Algeciras Conference, her beneficent intervention by her President and diplomatic representatives to procure the peace consummated between two remote powers upon our soil at Portsmouth, her participation through her Secretary of State and his able associates at the international conference at Rio de Janeiro, in July, 1906, her representation upon the Hague Tribunal, are obvious facts illustrating the novel and vast extension of her relations to the other nations of the world. She is no longer a hermit nation. She must meet these new international complications, which are "crowding for solution," wisely, and she must look for a constant succession of them.

They must be argued before her courts and her senates and her popular assemblies and by both voice and pen.

Public opinion, which daily more and more administers the world, must be informed and guided with reference to them.

The American Journal of International Law, the publication of which was begun by the American Society of International Law, in January, 1907, is the

first and only periodical in the English language devoted wholly to the law of

nations.

Its first three pages are devoted to an able discussion by Mr. Secretary Root of "The Need of Popular Understanding of International Law." He points out that now the governments are controlled by the people oftener than the people by the government; that one of the chief obstacles to peaceable adjustment of international controversies is the violent condemnation of any negotiator or arbitrator by his own people if he yields any part of their demand, whether such part is just and lawful or not; that Daniel Webster suffered for his concessions as to our Canadian boundary in 1842, and Lord Ashburton, who represented Great Britain, suffered equally "as the price of agreeing upon a settlement worth. to the peace and prosperity of each country a thousand times as much as the value of all the territory that was in dispute."

He pleads for a spirit of justice, understanding, self-restraint, and courtesy in international affairs, and for the raising up of a sufficient body of men acquainted with the law of nations to lead and form public opinion on all important international questions that arise.

It is submitted that our law schools ought not to refuse to do their part in training their graduates for so useful, necessary, and patriotic a function.

The gross ignorance of international law of our public men in the past has often exposed us to unfavorable comment and sometimes brought us to the very verge of war, as with England in the

*The writer recalls Judge Nelson's printed statement upon this subject, but is not able to find it at present. See, also, Congress of Arts and Science (St. Louis) vol. 7, pp. 509, 510, for a description by this, writer of the treatment of "Neutral Blockade Runners" by the United States during the war with the Confederacy, showing this confusion and ignorance.

Mason and Slidell incident in the 60's. Yet the capacity of our people for this department of law can hardly be questioned when we remember that, to speak only of the dead, we have given to the literature of the law of nations such great and authoritative names as Kent and Story, Wheaton, Lawrence, Dana, Woolsey, and Wharton, honored abroad as they are honored here.

We think it a great advance in just and rational procedure under municipal law that, less than a hundred years ago, the right of trial by wager of battle was done away in English law. An equal advance is sought in just and rational procedure in the domain of international controversies by doing away between nations with that same irrational, unjust, and blood-stained right of trial by wager of battle.†

For that end the Hague Tribunal has been created and equipped, but it stands. a court without a sheriff and is called on to administer and effectuate a law almost as wide and indefinite as that of morality itself. The law of that worldwide and beneficent jurisdiction must take its more authoritative shape and enforceable form through the action of the lawyers and publicists of all nations, and in shaping rules, to which all must. bow, our nation as a matter of right and policy must take its part, and ought not to take an unenlightened part.

It is submitted that the body of American lawyers in the coming generation ought to be equipped to make some adequate contribution from bench and bar, senate, and forum to the noble service of international justice and international peace, and they have a right to ask that all our well-equipped law schools, follow

See Hon. David J. Hill in Contemporary Development of Diplomacy Congress of Arts & Science (St. Louis), vol. 7, p. 375.