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Woodrow Wilson and a World Governed by Evolving Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2009

John A. Thompson
John A. Thompson
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Extract

It is a regrettable feature of the scholarly literature on Woodrow Wilson that so little of it relates to, or attempts to integrate, all the different phases or various aspects of his career—as an academic political scientist, as a figure in American domestic politics, and as a shaper of American foreign policy (and begetter of what has become known as “Wilsonianism”). Of course, there have been many biographies, including some fine ones, but they have generally paid more attention to Wilson's personal life and characteristics than to his thinking. There have also been some books on his work as an academic political scientist, but these have not explored in any depth its relation to his later political career. The disjunction has some justification in that Wilson's actions and utterances as a politician certainly reflected both immediate pressures and a variety of considerations apart from his own personal beliefs and ideals. Nevertheless, he remained the same man, and an appreciation of the long-established and deeply rooted views Wilson held about the nature of politics and of historical development can enhance our understanding of his approach to the problems he faced—not least with respect to foreign policy. In this essay I will attempt to make such a connection by focusing on Wilson's thought about law and constitutions—subjects central to his thinking about politics throughout his life.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , January 2008 , pp. 113 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 2008

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References

Notes

1. Exceptions are Cooper's, John Milton joint biography, The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt (Cambridge, Mass., 1983)Google Scholar, and Stid's, Daniel D. study of Wilson's conduct of the presidency, The President as Statesman: Woodrow Wilson and the Constitution (Lawrence, Kans., 1998).Google Scholar

2. See particularly Bragdon, Henry Wilkinson, Woodrow Wilson: The Academic Years (Cambridge, Mass., 1967)Google Scholar, and Thorsen, Niels Aage, The Political Thought of Woodrow Wilson, 1875–1910 (Princeton, 1988).Google Scholar

3. Indeed, this is something emphasized in Thompson, John A., Woodrow Wilson (London, 2002).Google Scholar

4. This article, like most recent scholarly work on Wilson, has only been made possible by the magnificent sixty-nine-volume edition of his Papers, principally edited by Link, Arthur S., which brought to light many of Wilson's early essays and papers, previously unpublished. The Papers of Woodrow Wilson [hereafter PWW] (Princeton, 1966–1994).Google Scholar

5. “The Lawyer and the Community,” Address in Chattanooga, Tennessee, 31 August 1910. PWW, 21, 66.

6. “The Law and the Facts,” Presidential Address to the American Political Science Association, 27 December 1910. PWW, 22, 263.

7. Address to the Congress, 2 April 1917. PWW, 41, 520.

8. WW to Robert Bridges, 29 April 1883. PWW, 2, 343.

9. Baker, Ray Stannard, Woodrow Wilson: Life and Letters (London, 1928), 5, 17.Google Scholar

10. Memorandum by Robert Lansing, 11 January 1919. PWW, 54, 4.

11. Miller, David Hunter, The Drafting of the Covenant (New York, 1928), 2, 7–15Google Scholar; House diary, 15 August 1918. PWW, 49, 266–67.

12. “The Royal United Kingdom Yacht Club,” c. 1 July 1874. PWW, 1, 54–56.

13. Knock, Thomas J., To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order (New York, 1991), 4–5.Google Scholar

14. Wilson, Woodrow, Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics (Baltimore, 1981), 28–30.Google Scholar

15. “Of the Study of Politics,” c. 25 November 1886. PWW, 5, 396–97.

16. See Parker, Kunal M., “Context in History and Law: A Study of the Late Nineteenth-Century Jurisprudence of Custom,” Law and History Review 24, no. 3 (Fall 2006), 473–518CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I am indebted to Christopher Tomlins for this reference.

17. For an example of Wilson's references to Maine's work, see “A Lecture on Sovereignty,” 9 November 1891. PWW, 7, 328. Maine, together with Wilson's great heroes and mentors, Walter Bagehot and Edmund Burke, was one of the subjects Wilson chose when he was invited to give three public lectures at Johns Hopkins University in 1898. Bragdon, Wilson: The Academic Years, 443.

18. “The Law and the Facts,” Presidential Address to the American Political Science Association, 27 December 1910. PWW, 22, 263–72.

19. The State: Elements of Historical and Practical Politics, chap. 13, “Nature and Forms of Government,” PWW, 6, 273. Wilson here was reflecting the thought of what had become by the later nineteenth century the dominant school of jurisprudence in the United States. For example, in his Law of Usages and Customs (1881), J. Balfour Browne wrote, “All laws have been in practice before they are put in words” (1). See Parker, “Context in History and Law,” passim.

20. A Lecture on Sovereignty, November 1891. PWW, 7, 336.

21. “The Modern Democratic State,” 1885. This unpublished paper has been authoritatively described by Arthur S. Link as “the ideological framework from which Wilson never seriously deviated.” PWW, 5, 67–69, 58.

22. On the centrality of the question of leadership to Wilson's thinking about politics, see Thorsen, The Political Thought of Woodrow Wilson, 59–64, and Thompson, Woodrow Wilson, 35–39.

23. Constitutional Government in the United States, 1908. PWW, 18, 105–6.

24. “Editorial Note: Wilson's First Lecture on Burke,” WW to Caleb T. Winchester, 13 May 1893; “Edmund Burke: The Man and His Times,” c. 31 August 1893. PWW, 8, 316–17, 211, 318–.

25. The State. PWW, 6, 257.

26. “Liberty Is Not Anarchy,” 22 February 1895. PWW, 9, 217.

27. “A Lecture on Sovereignty,” 9 November 1891. PWW, 7, 337.

28. “The Modern Democratic State,” December 1885. PWW, 5, 75.

29. “The Law and the Facts,” PWW, 22, 264, 270.

30. “Edmund Burke: The Man and His Times,” PWW, 8, 335, 340.

31. Link, Arthur S., Wilson: The New Freedom (Princeton, 1956), 256–259.Google Scholar

32. An Address to the Conference of Governors in Frankfort, Kentucky, 29 November 1910. PWW, 22, 104.

33. Constitutional Government in the United States, 1908. PWW, 18, 182–96.

34. Link, Arthur S., Wilson: Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace, 1916–1917 (Princeton, 1965), 60.Google Scholar

35. Recent scholarship has emphasized the extent to which Wilson's behavior at this time was affected by his deteriorating health—before as well as after his massive stroke in October 1919. See Link, Arthur S., Woodrow Wilson: Revolution, War, and Peace (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1979)Google Scholar, and Copper, John Milton Jr., Breaking the Heart of the World: Woodrow Wilson and the Fight for the League of Nations (Cambridge, 2001).Google Scholar

36. For the view that Wilson's policy was inspired by Christian idealism, see Devlin, Patrick, Too Proud to Fight: Woodrow Wilson's Neutrality (Oxford, 1974), 678–679Google Scholar; Link, Wilson: Revolution, War and Peace, 11; Knock, To End All Wars, 33.

37. Wilson to W. J. Bryan, 5 June 1915. PWW, 33, 342.

38. Thompson, Woodrow Wilson, 106, 117–18, 122–25.

39. “Leaders of Men,” 17 June 1890. PWW, 6, 660, 659.

40. “Democracy,” December 1891. PWW, 7, 348.

41. Address to the League to Enforce Peace, 27 May 1916. PWW, 37, 113–16.

42. An Unpublished Prolegomenon to a Peace Note, c. 25 November 1916. PWW, 40, 67.

43. Protocol of a Plenary Session of the Inter-Allied Conference for the Preliminaries of Peace, 25 January 1919. PWW, 54, 266.

44. An address at Guildhall, 28 December 1918. PWW, 53, 532–33.

45. WW to Edward M. House, 22 March 1918. PWW, 47, 105.

46. The key features of the League to Enforce Peace's plan were that the members of the projected League of Nations would join in compelling all the signatories to go through a procedure in case of disputes between them, either of a judicial hearing or of conciliation (depending on the nature of the dispute), before resorting to war.

47. Memorandum of a conversation between Gustave Ador, President of the Swiss Confederation, and Mr. Wilson, President of the United States, 23 January 1919. PWW, 54, 233.

48. Address to the Third Plenary Session of the Peace Conference, 14 February 1919. PWW, 55, 174–75; Congressional Government, 29–30.

49. Miller, Drafting of the Covenant, 12–13. On this issue, see Manela, Erez, “A Man Ahead of His Time?” International Journal (Autumn 2005): 1115–1124.Google Scholar

50. Address to the Third Plenary Session of the Peace Conference, 14 February 1919. PWW, 55, 174–75.

51. Address to American Bar Association, 20 October 1914. PWW, 31, 184–86.

52. Constitutional Government in the United States, 1908. PWW, 18, 85.

53. Cooper, Breaking the Heart of the World, 424.

54. “Comments on the paper entitled ‘Kennan versus Wilson’ by Professor Thomas J. Knock,” in The Wilson Era: Essays in Honor of Arthur S. Link, ed. Cooper, John Milton Jr. and Neu, Charles E. (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1991), 330.Google Scholar