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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2013
For more than half a century, the states of the Western hemisphere have coöperated for the promotion of their mutual interests by means of a loose form of organization which is unique in the categories of political science. Step by step, the organization has proclaimed its principles and strengthened the machinery of its conferences and its consultative meetings of Foreign Ministers; step by step it has enlarged its functions and developed new agencies for their administration. But at no time have the American states sought to draw up a formal charter defining the status of their collective membership as constituting a corporate international person. Rather they have preferred to coöperate along practical lines and to develop their organization progressively as the circumstances of the time appeared to demand. In consequence, while the inter-American system exists as a fact, while it functions as an association or “union” of twentyone American states, its precise juridical character as a regional organization has never been defined. Whether the establishment of the new international organization contemplated by the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals will call for such a definition, in order to establish more accurately the relations between the two systems, is a question for speculation, now that the Conference at Mexico City is in progress.
2 It is difficult even to give a precise name to the inter-American organization, “Union of the American Republics” and “Union of the American States” being used alternatively. See Resolution, Reorganization of the “Union of the American Republics,” Buenos Aires, 1910, International Conferences of American States, 1889–1928, p. 172Google Scholar, and Convention, Pan American Union, Havana, 1928, ibid., p. 398. The Union of the American Republics is to be distinguished from the Pan American Union, which is one of the “organs” through which its objectives are attained. See below, note 19.
3 See below, note 20.
4 A convenient list of the various statements of inter-American principles may be found in the marginal annotations attached to the revised reaffirmation of Fundamental Principles of International Law, submitted to the American Governments by the Inter-American Juridical Committee under date of March 6, 1944. For the text of the Reaffirmation, see Inter-American Conference on War and Post-War Problems; Manual for the Use of the Delegates, Pan American Union Bulletin, Dec., 1944, p. 669. To this list must now be added the Declaration adopted at the Conference at Mexico City.
5 The Inter-American Juridical Committee, in the Reaffirmation of Fundamental Principles above referred to, phrased the two principles as follows:
“Respect by each State for the personality, sovereignty, and independence of every other State constitutes the basis of international order, just as in the relations of individuals mutual respect constitutes the basis of the democratic social order.
States are juridically equal, in the sense that they have the same fundamental rights.
This equality derives from the existence of the State as a person of international law and not from the power which the individual State may possess to defend or maintain it.
In like manner this juridical equality is independent of the territorial size of the particular State or of the degree of its material progress.
In consequence, no State may be held bound by changes in the rules of law, whether in political or in economic matters, to which it has not freely consented.”
6 In its preliminary Recommendation on Post-War Problems, the Inter-American Juridical Committee called attention to the necessity of modifying the traditional conception of sovereignty so as to make the principle “consistent with the supreme necessity of maintaining peace, order, and justice in the international community.” “No nation,” said the Recommendation, “may claim as an attribute to sovereignty the right to be the judge in its own case or the right to take the law into its own hands and assert its claims by force.” Pan American Union Publication, p. 18. The same injunction is repeated in the Juridical Committee's Preliminary Comments and Recommendations on the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals,” Pan American Union Publication, p. 3.
7 Editor's Note: These principles were most formally stated by the Inter-American Conference on Problems of War and Peace, at Mexico City, in the “Declaration of Mexico” (Resolution XI), expecially Principles 2 and 3.
8 International Conferences of American States, 1933–1940, p. 191.
9 In its memorandum submitted to the Department of State with reference to the proposed international organization, the government of Uruguay observed that although it adhered to the principle of non-intervention, “it considers collective intervention justified in the case of the state which constitutes a threat to the peace, it being the duty of the Organization to determine the modalities of such intervention.” “Inter-American Conference on Problems of War and Peace, Handbook for the Use of Delegates,” Pan American Union Publication, p. 140.
10 See below, note 14, indicating the extension of the inter-American principle to include mutual protection within the regional group.
11 See, in this connection, the two drafts submitted to the American governments by the Inter-American Juridical Committee in Article IV of its original text of the Reaffirmation of Fundamental Principles, June 2, 1942, and in its revised text, March 6, 1944.
12 The two principles appear as Article V of the Juridical Committee's Reaffirmation of Fundamental Principles, with marginal references to documents.
13 See below, note 23.
14 The proposed “Act of Chapultepec,” now under discussion at Mexico City, appears to be directed to the extension of the inter-American principle of collective security to include mutual protection by the American States of any one of their number against the attack of any other.
15 The Conference now being held in Mexico City appears to have a special character which cannot for the moment be exactly determined.
16 The “Conclusion” approved at the Meeting of Foreign Ministers at Rio de Janeiro in 1942, under the title “Breaking of Diplomatic Relations,” par. III, is an interesting illustration of the dilution of obligations to secure unanimity of agreement.
17 The Juridical Committee is at present engaged in a study of the resolutions, declarations, and recommendations of consultative meetings of Foreign Ministers, in pursuance of Resolution XXVII of the Rio meeting.
18 This opinion is personal, the question being under discussion by the Juridical Committee.
19 The Pan American Union was originally the “Commercial Bureau of the American Republics,” functioning as an agency of the “International Union of American Republics.” At the Fourth International Conference of American States, held at Buenos Aires in 1910, the bureau was given the name “Pan American Union,” which has tended to create confusion between the Union and the Union of the American Republics which maintains it as one of its organs or agencies. International Conferences of American States, 1889–1988, pp. 172, 268, 398.
20 See, in respect to possible political activities of the Pan American Union, the observations of the Executive Committee on Post-War Problems of the Governing Board of the Pan American Union,” Pan American Postwar Organization,” Pan American Union Publication, 1944, p. 15.
21 Press reports indicate the adoption by the Conference at Mexico City of a plan for the reorganization of the inter-American system which will include a modification of the composition of the Governing Board of the Union as well as an extension of the powers of the Union.
22 Pan American Postwar Organization, p. 11.
23 Op. cit., p. 14.
24 The Inter-American Juridical Committee, in its report on the coördination of inter-American peace agreements (op. cit., p, 31), makes provision for the procedure of judicial settlement in its alternative coördination draft, contemplating the ultimate membership of all of the American states in the Permanent Court of International Justice.
25 With the extension, according to forecasts of the action of the conference at Mexico City, of the inter-American security system to include an attack by one American state upon another, the neutrality provisions of the convention of 1936 should disappear without notice from inter-American law, as they doubtless will from international law when the charter of the new organization is adopted at San Francisco.
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