ON

INTERNATIONAL LAW

PRINCIPALLY SELECTED FROM DECISIONS OF

ENGLISH AND AMERICAN COURTS

EDITED BY

JAMES BROWN SCOTT

"The law of nations is naturally founded on this principle, that differ-
ent nations ought in time of peace to do one another all the good they
can, and in time of war as little harm as possible, without prejudicing
their real interests,"-Baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, 1748.
"I am much obliged by the kind present you have made us of your edition
of Vattel. It came to us in good season, when the circumstances of a rising
state make it necessary frequently to consult the law of nations. Accord-
ingly, that copy which I kept
has been continually in the hands

of the members of our Congress now sitting."-Benjamin Franklin, 1775.
"Every nation, on being received, at her own request, into the circle of civ-
ilized governments, must understand that she not only attains rights of
sovereignty and the dignity of national character, but that she binds herself
also to the strict and faithful observance of all those principles, laws, and
usages which have obtained currency among civilized states, and which
have for their object the mitigation of the miseries of war."-Daniel Web-
ster, Secretary of State, to Mr. Thompson, Minister to Mexico, April 15, 1842.

AMERICAN CASEBOOK SERIES

WILLIAM R. VANCE

GENERAL EDITOR

ST. PAUL

WEST PUBLISHING COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1922

BY

WEST PUBLISHING COMPANY

(SCOTT INT.LAW.)

Inscribed to the Memory of

FREEMAN SNOW

Instructor of International Law in Harvard University

who taught me to love the law of nations,
and, in doing so, to love him

(iii) *

THE first of the American Casebook Series, Mikell's Cases on Criminal Law, issued in December, 1908, contained in its preface an able argument by Mr. James Brown Scott, the General Editor of the Series, in favor of the case method of law teaching. Until 1915 this preface appeared in each of the volumes published in the series. But the teachers of law have moved onward, and the argument that was necessary in 1908 has now become needless. That such is the case becomes strikingly manifest to one examining three important documents that fittingly mark the progress of legal education in America. In 1893 the United States Bureau of Education published a report on Legal Education prepared by the American Bar Association's Committee on Legal Education, and manifestly the work of that Committee's accomplished chairman, William G. Hammond, in which the three methods of teaching law then in vogue—that is, by lectures, by text-book, and by selected cases-were described and commented upon, but without indication of preference. The next report of the Bureau of Education dealing with legal education, published in 1914, contains these unequivocal statements:

*

*

"To-day the case method forms the principal, if not the exclusive, method of teaching in nearly all of the stronger law schools of the country. Lectures on special subjects are of course still delivered in all law schools, and this doubtless always will be the case. But for staple instruction in the important branches of common law the case has proved itself as the best available material for use practically everywhere. The case method is to-day the principal method of instruction in the great majority of the schools of this country." But the most striking evidence of the present stage of development of legal instruction in American Law Schools is to be found in the special report, made by Professor Redlich to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, on "The Case Method in American Law Schools." Professor Redlich, of the Faculty of Law in the University of Vienna, was brought to this country to make a special study of methods of legal instruction in the United States from the standpoint of one free from those prejudices necessarily engendered in American teachers through their relation to the struggle for supremacy so long, and at one time so vehemently, waged among the rival systems. From this masterly report, so replete with brilliant analysis and discriminating comment, the following brief extracts are taken. Speaking of the text-book method Professor Redlich says:

"The principles are laid down in the text-book and in the professor's lectures, ready made and neatly rounded, the predigested essence