A Treatise on International Law

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PART I CHAPTER I PERSONS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, AND COMMUNITIES POSSESSING AN ANALOGOUS CHARACTER Primarily international law governs the relations of such of PART l the communities called independent states as voluntarily subject oHAP' themselves to it. To a limited extent, as will be seen presently,...
More Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PART I CHAPTER I PERSONS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, AND COMMUNITIES POSSESSING AN ANALOGOUS CHARACTER Primarily international law governs the relations of such of PART l the communities called independent states as voluntarily subject oHAP' themselves to it. To a limited extent, as will be seen presently, munities it may also govern the relations of certain communities of gv?rned . by 1nter- analogOUS character. The marks of an independent state are, national l1t W that the community constituting it is permanently established for a political end, that it possesses a denned territory, and that it is independent of external control. It is postulated of those independent states which are dealt with by international law that they have a moral nature identical with that of individuals, and that with respect to one another they are in the same relation as that in which individuals stand to each other who are subject to law. They are collective persons, and as such they have rights and are under obligations. These postulates assume the conformity of the nature of such states as are governed by law to the conditions necessarily precedent to the existence of law; because the capacity in a corporate person to be subject to law evidently depends upon the existence of a sense of right, and of a sense of obligation to act in obedience to it, either on the part of the community at large, or at least of the man or body of men in whom the will governing the acts of the community resides. In so far moreover as states are permanently established societies their marks represent a necessary condition of subjection to law. A society, PART I for example, of which the duration is wholly uncertain cannot offer solid guarantees for the fulfilment of obligations, and cannot therefore ...