The Law of Nature in Early American Diplomacy

Extract

By permission this address will be published in full in the American Journal of International Law. The following is an abstract:

In the paper entitled the Law of Nature and Early American Diplomacy, an attempt was made to estimate the influence which the Continental text-writers had upon American conceptions of the Law of Nations. These text-writers, from Grotius to Vattel, were widely read and studied by the statesmen of the Revolutionary era. They were used in preparation for the bar, and frequent references to them are to be found not only by those who had the direction of American diplomacy from and after 1776 but also by the courts. International law found entrance into American legal thought through the law of prize. As early as 1776 a Massachusetts court, in the case of Grover v. the Brig William, held that by the Law of Nations, Boston was in March, 1776, a place besieged. Courts in the various states at the outset assumed full admiralty jurisdiction, refusing to make the English distinction between courts of instance and of prize. The decisions of the courts in these early prize-cases followed neither British precedent nor the continental text-writers, but usually what seemed to be the best European practice. Although there appears to be little in these decisions drawn directly from the Law of Nature, it is otherwise in the writings of the early diplomats. There the influence of the text-writers is more apparent. The treaties with France in 1778, as the first American attempts at the formulation of international rights and duties, show the influence of the writers as well as of continental practice. As the United States proceeded upon its carreer as a nation, American diplomats depended more and more upon the ideas of International Law as developed by the Federal Courts. To single out certain principles as drawn from the Law of Nature is difficult owing to the elusive nature of the conceptions of that law, It is safe to say, however, that the Law of Nature furnished the founders of the Nation with an ideal as to international rights and duties somewhat comparable with those ideals of individual liberty derived from the doctrines of Natural Rights.