What is the Trouble with International Law?

Payson S. Wild

American Political Science Review, 1938, vol. 32, issue 3, 478-494

Abstract: According to the textbooks of publicists, and according to the formal rules of international law, Ethiopia possessed certain well defined rights, and as a state was legally equal to all other states. Her position in the world, legally considered,was secure, buttressed as it was by a formidable array of rights such as “existence” and “self-defense.” Yet when it came to discussing the fate of Ethiopia, students of international affairs did not run to their law books, but focussed their attention upon happenings in Rome, Paris, London, and possibly Geneva. China, too, is a state, endowed with a legal right to exist on equal terms in what is euphemistically called the “family of nations.” But Far Eastern events are determined and shaped but little by legal rules; rather it is the policies of Japan and the other Great Powers which actually condition the flow of events and govern the future of China. Situations such as these are by no means exceptional, and lead many to the conclusion that they make for “a world without an effective system of public international law, in which force is the determining factor between nations [and in which] only Great Powers, by reason of their disproportionate strength, can invest their national policies with real international importance.”

Date: 1938
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