The Development and Formation of International Law

Extract

We have seen that in private law the Canonists and Romanists made open war on custom, and took sides against it on behalf of the written law — the formal, written word, emanating direct from the will of the supreme authority. Custom has contributed a large number of rules to the law of nations. To the examples already given we may add the formalities of treaties and the necessity of ratification; rules which appear in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries of our era, and in accordance with which the signature of the plenipotentiaries does not make conventions binding in the absence of their confirmation by the supreme authority. Hand in hand with laws, edicts and decrees, which together form the “consular laws,” custom is still to be found in so far as regards the laws in force in the European and American States, over the territory of different important political communities, such as the Ottoman Empire, various Asiatic Powers, and certain African governmental communities. Is it necessary to recall that almost all of the laws of war are the result of customs recognized during hundreds of years, and upon which intellectual and moral progress has not ceased to exert a beneficent influence?