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The Green Bag
mitted an official proposition to establish a Court of Arbitral Justice as proposed at the second Hague Conference, and to allow the judges of the Prize Court to sit also as judges of this Court. This pro position was rejected. The work of this London Conference, in providing a body of conventional or treaty "law" and in harmonizing the varying rules and practices now prevail ing in prize litigation, is, of course, a great step forward if ratified; but it is after all an institution made necessary by actual war, and I mention it here only because the advocates of a general Court of Nations see in it a step towards their goal. There seems to be a unanim ity of opinion among writers on this subject that, now that a start has been made, the next Hague Conference will agree upon such a Court; and there is undoubtedly a tremendous movement for it on the part of publicists and the various societies and individuals work ing for the general cause of Peace, the Federation of the World, the Parlia ment of Man, and the like. Let us see whether these expectations are justified. I shall not stop to analyze the plan proposed nor the more obvious objec tions to it. Many interesting practical questions connected with the creation of such a Court do, of course, at once suggest themselves to you as practising lawyers. Under our Constitution how could we agree to it? What form of procedure should or could be adopted? What general system of jurisprudence should prevail? What language should be used? How could jurisdiction be obtained over refractory parties, or de crees enforced? I shall pass these ques tions by. Most of them have been answered, at least to the satisfaction of the proponents. So, too, I shall resist the temptation that comes to every lawyer who has to do with international
law, "the vanishing point of jurispru dence," to say some unkind things about that unsatisfactory branch of our science. To most of us it is too often a mere bundle of contradictory precedents and emasculated fictions, adorned by the moral precepts of many generations of college professors and learned textwriters. We have, as lawyers, allowed this branch of jurisprudence to fall into other hands and perhaps we have no business in their territory; certainly we are looked upon as interlopers. "What business have you," pertinently de manded Orgetorix of Caesar, "in this Gaul of mine which I have conquered?" The idea of such a Court should, how ever, interest all of us as students of the general philosophy of law. This propo sition to substitute the lawyer for the soldier, and the pen for the sword, is quite the most ambitious world move ment of our era. Aside from all ques tions of feasibility, it should interest us as American lawyers especially, be cause (1) it is a phase of an idea that is today at work everywhere in American law-giving, and because (2) it is an attempt of the Anglo-American to en force his ideas of the science of law upon peoples that hitherto have enter tained radically different theories. Before discussing the proposition gen erally it is of capital importance to note that the idea of a purely juristic solu tion of the problem of putting an end to war is of Anglo-American origin. Perhaps if this fact were more fully realized, the difficulties, if not the futil ity, of the whole plan would be better appreciated. At least, I think it well to establish briefly this proposition. The Grand Design of Henri IV, the elaboration thereof by the Abb6 de St. Pierre, Kant's scheme of perpetual peace, and the schemes of modern Continental writers, are attempts not at a juristic,
