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ground. In the meantime, however, inter "And hence it inevitably follows, that the law obtaining between nations is not positive national law is enforced without him. Sir Frederick Pollock has in a recent arti law: for every positive law is set by a given sovereign to a person or persons in a state! cle in the Columbia Latv Review for Decem ber, 1902, admirably met this objection: of subjection to its author. As I have al "The imptrfect state of the law of nations, ready intimated, the law obtaining between in respect that it lacks a cosmopolitan junations as law (improperly so called) set by dical court with power to execute its de general opinion. The duties which it im crees, is a well-worn topic. It has been dis poses are enforced by moral sanctions: by fear on the part of nations, or by fear on the cussed ever since Dante wrote his treatise part of sovereigns, of provoking general DC Monarchia. Some writers have used it as hostility and incurring its probable evils in an argument, or have even supposed it to case they shall violate maxims generally re prove conclusively that there is no such thing as a law of nations. With regard to ceived and respected." Professor Holland reverently revoices the this contention it seems fit to be considered ideas of the master in the following passage: that in the early history of all jurisdictions "But there is a third kind of law which it is the executive power at the disposal of the for many reasons convenient to coordinate courts .has been rudimentary, if indeed they had such power at all. It is not universally with the two former kinds, although it can true that even the highest courts in the most indeed be described as law only by courtesy, civilized modern states can always enforce since the rights with which it is concerned their judgments. Thirty years before the cannot properly be described as legal. It is American Civil War the State of Georgia de that body of rules, usually described as In ternational law, which regulates the rights fied the Supreme Court of the United States which prevail between state and state (civitas for eighteen months, with the open conniv ance of the President of the United States: and civis.) 'John Marshall has made the decision, now "The differences between these three kinds let him execute it.' But the decision made of law, private, public, and international, depend upon the presence or absence of an by John Marshall stands as part of the law of the United States, and would do so even arbiter of the rights of parties. if its execution had been wholly frustrated in "It is plain that if law be defined as we the particular case. In the Middle Ages have defined it, a political arbiter by which it can be enforced is of its essence, and law there was nothing uncommon in rival courts within the same political allegiance obstruct without an arbiter is a contradiction in terms. Convenient therefore as it is on ing one another's process and thwarting one many accounts the phrase 'international another's jurisdiction in every way short of violence. More than this, courts have ex law,' to express those rules of conduct in isted with an elaborate constitution and pro accordance with which, either in conse cedure and no compulsory powers what quence of their express consent, or in pursu ever." ance of the usage of the civilized world, na And after all that has been written or said tions are expected to act, it is impossible to on the subject perhaps the aptest description regard these rules as being in reality any of the lesjal nature of international law is that thing more than' the moral code of na for which Sir Frederick stood sponsor in his tions." If this arbiter should one day appear, it First Book of Jurisprudence (p. 13): "Cus is clear that this objection would fall to the j toms and observances in an imperfectly or