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The Codification of International Law *

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2017

Ernest Nys
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Extract

Law is the whole of the rules which regulate the relations of men. At the commencement of civilization and, even at the present day, primitive peoples and nations not in a complete state of civilization have clothed these rules with supernatural attributes; they have been represented as having been imposed upon mankind by a supernatural power; they have been given the effect of magic formulas, which, it is to be supposed, result in the chastisement and punishment of those who violate their dictates. Following the development of humanity step by step, three separate domains of law have been marked out: private law, or the law of men in the character of individuals; public or political law, or law as applied to men in their capacity as members of the state; and finally, the law of nations or international law, in other words, the law of states.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Journal of International Law , Volume 5 , Issue 4 , October 1911 , pp. 871 - 900
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 1911

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Footnotes

*

Translated by courtesy of Mr. Clement L. Bouvé, of the District of Columbia Bar.

References

1 Jeremy Bentham was fond of coining new words. We stand much in his debt for this. The term “international law” appears for the first time in his Principles of Morals and Legislation, 1789. Etienne Dumont, the translator of Bentham’s works, introduced the word “international” into the French language in 1802. Other words created by the great English jurist are: to codify, codification, to minimise, to maximise, panomion, panopticon, Anglo-American States or Washingtonia to designate the United States, Brit-Hibernian to indicate Great Britain and Ireland.

3 Franck, Louis, les Belges et la Paix, Brussels, 1905, page 105.Google Scholar

4 Ibid, page 115.

5 Ibid, page 109.

6 Ibid, page 119.

7 The homage which Francis Lieber paid to Grotius puts one in mind of the method in which the latter was honored at the second peace conference at The Hague in 1907. The entire world knows of the noble life of that illustrious man; his struggle for justice and for law; his wicked condemnation to life imprisonment which came upon him; his escape from the Fortress of Loevestein; his arrival in France where he compiled his immortal work, which appeared in Paris, and which was dedicated to Louis XIII. At the opening of the first session of the committee on the laws and customs of war, President August Beernaert considered it to be his duty to pay a tribute to the memory of Grotius ; he was ignorant of his history, and we read with stupefaction in the Actes et documents de la Seconde Conférence, Vol. III, page 101: “ I do not need to remind you that Holland is the classic soil of the law of nations. This is the country where in 1625 Grotius wrote his splendid treatise on The Laws of War and Peace.” Clio, the muse of history, insists upon exactness and respect for the truth.