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The Classification of International Organizations, II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Pitman B. Potter
Pitman B. Potter
Affiliation:
Institut Universitaire de Hautes Études Internationales, Geneva
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Extract

In any work of classification, the selection of standards is, of course, of primary importance. In the budget of the League, absurd results appear at various points as a result of arranging the contents thereof now according to one type of standard (subject-matter, as “Mandates”), now according to another (kind of service, as “Liaison”). Without coördinate and mutually exclusive standards, no classification can be complete or satisfactory.

One or two of the points made above might, it is obvious, be used as indices of classification if not used as grounds of exclusion. That is, if unofficial international organizations are not excluded entirely, as they logically should be, from this study, they might form one of the two classes of international organizations, along with official organizations. Similarly, organizations may be classified as bilateral and multilateral, in accord with the foregoing discussion, as resting upon mere practice or formal convention, as intended for the observance of some principle or for the taking of some overt action, and finally as relying upon national agencies for their operation or possessing agencies of their own.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , June 1935 , pp. 403 - 417
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1935

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References

51 Budget for 1933, as cited above, note 8.

52 See discussion in this Review, Vol. 25, p. 713 (Aug., 1931)Google Scholar.

53 The similarities or differences between administration and adjudication cannot be discussed in full here, and what follows would not be greatly altered if the treatment of adjudication as a phase of administration were rejected. But in addition to what is suggested in the text it may be recalled, on the one hand, that administrative officials always have the task, deemed so peculiarly judicial in character, of discovering what the law is upon a given matter and what it means in that connection, while, on the other, the court has to perform two other, characteristically administrative, tasks, namely, to discover the facts of the case in their exact detail and to formulate a judgment applying the law (which it has discovered) aptly thereto—by order or decree or what not. See also, from the international point of view, the subservience of national courts to national legislative bodies where alleged conflicts between national and international law arise: American Journal of International Law, Vol. 19, p. 315 (April, 1925)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Similarly for the distinction, if any, to be made between “executive” and administrative action; in so far as they differ, the former seems to retain more of the element of policy-determination than the latter, the latter to come upon the scene only when all need for this has been met. See below, near note 72.

54 This analysis assumes, obviously, that law consists of propositions consciously accepted by the parties thereto, and legislation of that process of acceptance. The fundamental conditions of life doubtless imply what rules should be adopted, but without that rational and volitional action those facts would remain outside the sphere of consciousness, the characteristic element of all social organization and action. It is necessary to go back of the law itself to find its origin, it has been truly said (Triepel, quoted by Brierly, J. L., in Académie de Droit International, Receuil des Cours, Vol. 23, p. 546Google Scholar), but the act of consent does lie outside of or behind the law, and it is to this last step before the appearance of the law, not to a more remote antecedent condition, that the student must go in his search. What is right or legal, what is law, in the sense of social life, is not what is harmonious with the conditions of life, and serviceable to man, but what is considered by men as harmonious there-with, or, at the most remote test, in accordance with the procedure adopted for determining this concordance. These positions will be accepted by all positivists without difficulty; at all events, they will be used as the basis for what follows.

55 Eagleton, C., International Government (1932), pp. xi, xiiGoogle Scholar; Mower, E. C., International Government (1931), pp. xv–xviGoogle Scholar. For the sake of simplicity and brevity, the commission, or general or interim committee—an organ often found standing between conference and bureau in various unions—is ignored here. It is usually composed of national representatives rather than truly international agents and possesses legislative power as well as supervisory administrative power, but when compared with conference and bureau it appears as anomalous or ambiguous in character. See above, note 53.

56 Potter, P. B., International Organization (3rd ed., 1928), p. 80Google Scholar.

57 Review of Mower in Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Sept., 1932)Google Scholar.

58 The law being defined as international by reference to its source, not its subject-matter or parties holding rights under it. See Potter, P. B., Manual Digest of Common International Law (1932), p. 5, etcGoogle Scholar.

59 Same, pp. 74 and 170–171, esp. 170, note 195.1.

60 Permanent Court of International Justice, Publications, Series A, No. 21.

61 See Constitution of the United States, Art. III, sect. 2, cl. 1.

62 Compare International Labor Organization Constitution, Art. 409.

63 See various provisions in the Convention of Mannheim governing nagivation of the Rhine, and creating and empowering the Central Commission (e.g., Arts. XXII, XXXIV, XLIII), in British and Foreign State Papers, Vol. LIX, p. 470Google Scholar.

64 See above, note 59.

65 See powers of Rhine River Commission in Treaty of Versailles, Art. 359.

66 Same, Art. 356.

67 For example, the financial reconstruction of Austria. See League of Nations, Secretariat, Ten Years of World Coöperation (1930), pp. 183–189Google Scholar; also Bureau International du Travail, La Réglementation des Migrations, Vol. III: Les Traités et les Conventions Internationales, 1929Google Scholar.

68 League of Nations, Report of World Economic Conference (1927), Vol. I, pp. 30–56Google Scholar.

69 Compare the situation in the Pan American Union prior to 1923. Stuart, G. H., Latin America and the United States (2nd ed., 1928), p. 21Google Scholar.

70 See the many cases of sole arbitrators, e.g., Moore, J. B., International Arbitrations (1898), p. 350Google Scholar.

71 Not, however, if it acts merely by authorization or permission of international law, as do all national administrative agencies. Thus a national consul acts under authority of international law in viséing passports of aliens desiring to enter his country, but in so doing he is administering the national law and instructions of his own state; while an agency or official who carries out the law and instructions of an international body is ad hoc an international administrative organ.

72 For practical reasons, these agents do not like to declare “no law” and wash their hands of a given problem, and sometimes existing codes of administration seem to make this impossible, however superior in sound juristic logic such action would be to the current practice. Of course if there is no law, the administrative agent need not move unless invoked to do so by an outside party, and when a court is asked to grant relief or apply a penalty it may conclude that no case has been made out justifying that action. But even these possible methods of escape do not entirely avert the action in question. Moreover, in international adjudication the court is seized of a cause by joint submission rather than unilateral action, and hence finds it harder still to escape by this avenue. See interesting discussion in Roden, A. A., “La Compétence de la Cour Permanente,” Revue de Droit International et de Législation Comparée, Vol. 12, p. 757 (1931)Google Scholar.

73 Handbook, p. 9.

74 See discussion in same, pp. 6–8, and Ray, p. 667, etc.

75 Summarized, with ample documentary citation, in Ray, p. 676, etc.

76 Handbook, pp. 3, 296–312.

77 Air Questions, International Conference on Private Law affecting.

Air Questions, International Technical Committee of League Experts on.

Danube, International Commission of the.

Danube, European Commission of the.

Danube, Permanent Technical Hydraulic System Commission of the.

Postal Union, International Bureau of the Universal.

Postal Union, International Bureau of the Pan-American.

Railway Transport, Central Office for International.

Railways, International Conference for Promoting Technical Uniformity on.

78 Decreasing frequency groups: Humanitarianism, Religion, Morals; Arts and Sciences; Labor; Communications and Transit; Law and Administration; Education; Medicine; Sport; etc.

79 See pp. 329–348.

80 Apparent exceptions may be found in the Recommendations of the General Conference of the International Labor Organization. But this is more apparent than real. International Labor Organization, Dix Ans d'Organisation Internationale du Travail (1931), p. 65Google Scholar.

81 Legislative power in executive and judicial bodies. Convention of the International Institute of Agriculture, Arts. VI and VIII, and Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice, Art. 30.

82 Of conferences: rules of procedure of the General Conference of the International Labor Organization, as published by the International Labor Office, based on International Labor Organization Constitution, Art. 403.

83 Convention of the Universal Postal Union (1929), Art. 10.

84 Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice, Art. 61. See also Ralston, J. H., Law and Procedure of Arbitral Tribunals (1926), p. 207Google Scholar.

85 This is simply a phase of the general right of self-preservation. See discussion in Fauchille, P., Traité de Droit International Public, 1922 (Bonfils, Manuel, 8th ed.), p. 410Google Scholar.

86 Best exemplified in the river commissions: above, notes 65 and 66.

87 For two remote approaches to such an arrangement, see Covenant of the League of Nations, Art. XIII, par. 4, and International Labor Organization Constitution, Art. 414.

88 The whole question of the relations among international organizations has been passed over lightly here (but see above, near notes 15 and 16) because it does not offer much aid in classification. If organizations are intimately related, they are not likely to be distinct organizations. If one organization controls another, this is sure to be true; also if one acts as agent for, or servant to, another. See, for example, Covenant of the League, Art. VI.

89 Convention of the International Institute of Agriculture, Art. IX.

90 No court, for example, would fit into this scheme.

91 See position of the Quarantine Council in Egypt: Conférence Sanitaire Internationale (1926), pp. 69, 508Google Scholar, and Loutfi, Z., La Politique Sanitaire Internationale (1906), p. 106Google Scholar.

92 See brief summary in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, 1930, Vol. VIII (1932), p. 177 (article “International Organization”)Google Scholar.

93 Argued more fully, in a particular case, in Potter, P. B., Revision of Treaties, 1933 (pamphlet), p. 16Google Scholar.

94 Deliberate efforts to utilize an organ for a function for which it was not intended may—or may not—succeed better; thus friends of international coöperation holding posts on administrative bodies at times attempt to have such agencies exercise power to make new law and engage the responsibility of member-states thereby, beyond the point to which the latter have previously been willing to go, and sometimes this manoeuvre succeeds. See, above, p. 32, and “Revision of Treaties,” in Geneva Special Studies, Vol. 3, No. 9 (1932), p. 10Google Scholar. There are also those—sometimes placed on such bodies internationally—who are, per contra, strict constructionists for opposite reasons.

95 The draft-text of this paper was discussed extensively with the members of the writer's seminar in international administration at the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva, and embodies numerous contributions made by them.

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