Effects of the League of Nations Covenant

Quincy Wright

American Political Science Review, 1919, vol. 13, issue 4, 556-576

Abstract: The League of Nations covenant is designed to “promote international coöperation and to achieve international peace and security.” To accomplish the first it provides organs of conference and recommendation and coördinates the numerous international unions already existing with some new ones. To accomplish the second, the members of the league covenant to refrain from acting or to act in a specified manner, in specified circumstances. “Scrupulous respect for all treaty obligations” is emphasized; thus in relation to the treaty of peace of which it is a part, the covenant is comparable to the various forms of oaths, hostages, and guaranties of previous peace treaties.No intention of modifying international law is expressed. On the contrary “the understandings of international law” are to be firmly established “as the actual rules of conduct among governments.” In fact, however, the character of law is dependent upon the character of its sanction. Law and organization are interdependent, and the covenant when put in operation will modify international law, though less in its specific rules than in certain assumptions upon which they have heretofore been supposed to rest.

Date: 1919
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:13:y:1919:i:04:p:556-576_01

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in American Political Science Review from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().