According to the theory accepted by the American and English courts, and by nearly all the American and English writers on international law, war between nations is war between their individual citizens. It makes of the citizens or subjects of one belligerent, enemies of the citizens or subjects of the other. The whole nation is embarked in one common bottom and must be reconciled to submit to one common fate. The government at war is the representative of the will of all the people and acts for the whole society. According to the rival theory, which, though first put forward by Rousseau merely as a philosophical principle, has been accepted by a large number of Continental jurists as a fundamental principle of international law, war is a relation between states in which individuals are enemies only accidentally, not as men nor even as citizens, but simply as soldiers. Under the Anglo-American theory, the private property of the nationals of each belligerent, on land or sea, is in principle subject to capture and confiscation by the other belligerent.

In a recent article entitled The Secret War in Central America and the Future of World Order, Professor John Norton Moore, a staunch defender of United States actions toward Nicaragua, sets forth a comprehensive array of factual assertions and legal arguments to support his conclusions that support by the United States of Nicaraguan counterrevolutionaries or “contras” and its own actions against Nicaragua are justified as collective self-defense under international law. He also presents arguments to support his conclusion that the International Court of Justice has so exceeded its authority in exercising jurisdiction in the case of Nicaragua v. United States that its decisions are void, and consequently may be ignored by the United States—or, for that matter, Nicaragua. Professor Moore’s analysis and conclusions differ sharply from those of the present writer. It should therefore be useful to identify the main points of disagreement, and to suggest the policy implications of the different legal arguments and conclusions.

Option of nationality in its various forms played an important rôle in the international law and diplomacy of the second half of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth. The concept undoubtedly reached a peak in popularity and demand in connection with the territorial settlements arising from the first World War, only to fall into disuse in subsequent years. The heyday of the idea of option in general international law and relations in the years following 1918 also coincided with the high point of the usage of the principle in Soviet diplomatic practice. Indeed, perhaps in the diplomatic repertoire of no other nation was option of nationality as frequently resorted to in this or any other comparable period as in the Soviet treaty arrangements of 1917–1924. Option in all its various juridical expressions occupied from the very first an extremely important place in the legal and political acts of the Soviet regime in its search for a modus vivendi with Russia’s neighbors. What is more, the experience of these first years firmly established option as an active and operative principle of Soviet foreign policy, in which capacity it has remained until the very present, whereas in the rest of the international community option has but rarely been revived since World War I.

Under a special agreement signed December 17, 1930, the United States agreed to arbitrate (pursuant to the Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes signed at The Hague, October 18, 1907) with the Government of Sweden the questions:

First, Whether the Government of the United States of America detained the Swedish motorship Kronprins Gustaf Adolf between June 23, 1917, and July 12, 1918, and the Swedish motorship Pacific between July 1, 1917, and July 19, 1918, in contravention of the Swedish-American treaties of April 3, 1783 and July 4, 1827.

The wave of exaggerated nationalism which has pervaded the nations of the earth generally since the World War has been accompanied by seemingly serious efforts on the part of national governments to arrange for the production within their territorial limits of as many as possible of the articles which their peoples consume, often quite heedless of the cost of home as compared with external production. Such disregard of economic laws could scarcely have failed to aggravate the poverty in which the world was inevitably left in the wake of the war. Political leaders have seemed wholly unmindful of the essential truth of economics, namely, that destruction and waste, the accompaniments of war, cannot be indulged in without a lowering of economic standards, that those standards can only be raised by production, and that recovery is accomplished in the measure that production is achieved at the place and by the methods which make possible the largest output of consumable goods in proportion to the labor and raw material involved.

The seventh of the Hague conventions bears the title, “Convention relative á la Transformation des Navires de Commerce en Bâtiments de Guerre.” The convention really relates to vessels which have already been converted into war ships rather than to their conversion.

Throughout Donald Trump's presidential campaign and into the first months of his presidency, he has warned that the United States' commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) may depend on whether its partner states increase their defense spending in line with previously adopted guidelines. While senior administration officials have reaffirmed U.S. commitments to the NATO alliance, including the North Atlantic Treaty's mutual defense obligation on several occasions, President Trump himself did not so until mid-June. Separately, the Trump administration signaled its support for NATO by supporting the admission of Montenegro as a new member state.

Professor Anthony D’Amato’s “Groundwork for International Law” (Groundwork) is an extremely pedagogical project. Despite its apparent simplicity, each rereading reveals a new layer of complexity, reflecting the depth of his lifelong engagement in the scholarship of international law. Moreover, from a certain perspective, his reexamination of the foundations of international law expresses a radicalism that reaches beyond the analysis of legal forms to provoke reflection on the nature and purpose of the international legal system.