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James Brown Scott and the Rise of Public International Law1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2010

John Hepp
John Hepp
Affiliation:
Wilkes University
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Abstract

James Brown Scott played a key role in the growth of public international law in the United States from the 1890s to the 1940s. While little remembered today, he was well-known among his contemporaries as a leading spokesman for a new and important discipline. Scott rose from obscure middle-class origins to occupy a prominent and influential place as an international lawyer who shared his legal expertise with seven presidents and ten secretaries of state. By examining his life we gain insight into the establishment of public international law as a discipline and on the era when lawyers qua lawyers began to help shape American foreign policy.

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Essays
Information
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , April 2008 , pp. 151 - 179
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Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2008

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References

2 The best single descriptive volume on law and international affairs for this period is Boyle, Francis Anthony, Foundations of World Order; The Legalist Approach to International Relations 1898–1921 (Durham, NC, 1999).Google Scholar See also, for the importance of international law to the first halt of the twentieth century, Jones, Dorothy V., Toward a just World: The Critical Years in the Search for InternationalJustice (Chicago, 2002)Google Scholar.

3 The two most complete biographies of Scott are an unpublished manuscript written by his assistant Finch, George, “James Brown Scott–Adventures in Internationalism,’Google Scholar the only copies of which are in the James Brown Scott Papers in the Georgetown University Library (hereafter cited as “Scott papers”), box 69; and a dissertation by Nurnberger, Ralph, “James Brown Scott: Peace Through Justice” (PhD diss., Georgetown University, 1975).Google Scholar A number of more easily accessible sources provide brief sketches of Scott's life: (i) a short professional biography by Nurnberger in Kuehl, Warren F., ed., Biographical Dictionary of Internationalists (Westport, CT, 1983), 660–62Google Scholar; (ii) the essay on Scott in The Dictionary of American Biography; (iii) Scott's entry in Who Was Who; (iv) an article by , Scott's assistant , Finch, “James Brown Scott, 1866–1943,” American journal of International Law 38(Apr. 1944): 183–217CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and (v) obituary, Scott's, “Dr. James B. Scott, Law Expert, Dead,” New York Times, June 27, 1943Google Scholar.

4 For these international issues, see Davis, Calvin DeArmond, The United States and the Second Hague Peace Conference: American Diplomacy and International Organisation, 1899–1914 (Durham, NC, 1975)Google Scholar.

5 There has been little sustained analysis of these international lawyers; but one law professor, Jonathan Zasloff, has studied the roles that particular lawyers played as secretaries of state during this period. He uses Root and others to trace the development of “classical legal consciousness” or “classical orthodoxy” in American law. Zasloff's understanding of American foreign policy is based firmly in the “realist” historiography and, in a wonderful bit of melodrama, he charges that Root and other “lawyers imbued with classical legal ideology concentrated on international law and institutions and neglected realpolitik foreign policy. In doing so, they unwittingly contributed to global catastrophe.” , Zasloff, “Law and the Shaping of American Foreign Policy: From the Gilded Age to the New Era,” New York University Law Review 78 (Apr. 2003): 240–373Google Scholar, quote from 243. Zasloff continues his analysis into the interwar period in “Law and the Shaping of American Foreign Policy: The Twenty Years' Crisis,” Southern California Law Review 11 (Mar. 2004): 583–682Google Scholar.

6 On the “Peace Progressives,” see Johnson, Robert David, The Peace Progressives and American Foreign Relations (Cambridge, MA, 1995).Google Scholar On imperialism, see Leuchtenburg, William E., “Progressivism and Imperialism: The Progressive Movement and American Foreign Policy, 1898–1916,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 39(Dec. 1952): 483–504.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For the historiographic debate, see Siracusa, Joseph M., “Progressivism, Imperialism, and the Leuchtenburg Thesis, 1952–1974,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 20 (Dec. 1974): 312–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Foreign policy is treated in Wiebe, Robert H., The Searchfor Order, 1877–1920 (New York, 1967)Google Scholar, chs. 9–10. On dollar diplomacy, see Rosenberg, Emily S., Financial Missionaries to the World: The Politics and Culture of Dollar Diplomacy, 1900–1930 (Durham, NC, 1999)Google Scholar; and Veeser, Cyrus, “Inventing Dollar Diplomacy: The Gilded-Age Origins of the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine,” Diplomatic History 27 (June 2003): 301–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On pp. 306–09, Veeser discusses how John Bassett Moore, a leading international lawyer, furthered the objectives of dollar diplomacy in one key arbitration. On the debate between unilateralism and collective action during the Taft and Wilson administrations, see Prisca, Salvatore, “John Barrett and Collective Approaches to United States Foreign Policy in Latin America, 1907–1920,” Diplomacy and Statecraft 14 (Sept. 2003): 57–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a review of the historiogra-phy and a proposed new synthesis, see Collin, Richard H., “Symbiosis versus Hegemony: New-Directions in the Foreign Relations Historiography of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft,” Diplomatic History 19 (Summer 1995): 473–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 For the death of the old synthesis, see Filene, Peter G., “An Obituary for ‘The Progressive Movement,’” American Quarterly 22 (Spring 1970): 20–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Rodgers, Daniel T., “In Search of Progressivism,” Renews in American History 10 (Dec. 1982): 113–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For new attempts at synthesis, see McCormick, Richard L., The Party Period and Public Policy: American Politicsfrom the Age of Jackson to the Progressive Era (New York, 1986), ch. 7Google Scholar; and McGerr, Michael, A Vierce Discontent: The Rise and tall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870–1920 (New York, 2003).Google Scholar A recent attempt to find a link between domestic progressivism and its foreign policy is Dawley, Alan, Changing the World: American Progressives in War and Revolution (Princeton, 2003).Google Scholar For a critical review, see Steigerwald, David, “Progressivism Redux,” Diplomatic History 29 (Jan. 2005): 189–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Bledstein, Burton J., The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America (New York, 1976).Google Scholar See also Friedson, Eliot, “The Theory of Professions: State of the Art” in The Sociology of the Professions: Lanyers, Doctors, and Others, ed. Dingwell, Robert and Lewis, Philip (New York, 1983), 19–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Burrage, Michael and Tortendahl, Rolf, ed., Professions in Theory and History: Rethinking the Study of the Professions (Newbury Park, CA, 1990).Google Scholar For the role of Scott's high school in this culture, see Labaree, David F., The Making of an American High School: The Credentials Market and the Central High School of Philadelphia, 1838–1939 (New Haven, 1988).Google Scholar For details of his childhood and the family's many achievements, see Stevens, Doris, Paintings and Drawings of Jeannette Scott, 1864–1937 (Mount Vernon, NY, 1940), 7–26Google Scholar.

9 Snow was the author of the first casebook on international law and offered Harvard's first course on the subject in 1886–87. Morison, Samuel Eliot, Three Centuries of Harvard, 1636–1936 (Cambridge, MA., 1936), 376.Google Scholar On postgraduate study in Europe during the Gilded Age, see Novick, Peter, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession (New York, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ross, Dorothy, The Origins of American Social Science (New York, 1991)Google Scholar.

10 On Butler, see Marrin, Albert, Nicholas Murray Butler (Boston, 1976).Google Scholar For Butler's role in the peace movement, see Herman, Sondra R., Eleven against War: Studies in American Internationalist Thought, 1898–1921 (Stanford, 1969), ch. 6Google Scholar.

11 For lawyers applying their skills outside the courtroom during this period, see Hall, Kermit L., The Magic Mirror: Lair in American History (New York, 1989), ch. 10Google Scholar.

12 Stevens, Robert, Law School: Legal Lducation in America from the 1850s to the 1980s (Chapel Hill, 1983), 78.Google Scholar

13 For Scott's work in the early growth of the University of Illinois Law School, see “Report to Andrew S. Draper, President of the University of Illinois, From James Brown Scott, Dated May 1, 1903, For the Year 1902–03,” Scott Papers, box 56. For the competing views of legal education, see , Stevens, Law SchoolGoogle Scholar, and Johnson, William R., Schooled Lawyers: A Study in the Clash of Professional Cultures (New York, 1978).Google Scholar For an examination of the development of late nineteenth-century legal doctrine, see Horwitz, Morton J., The Transformation of American Law, 1870–1960: The Crisis of Legal Orthodoxy (New York, 1992), chs. 1–3.Google Scholar The quotation comes from an undated, untitled document that begins: “The purpose of Editor and Publisher in undertaking the American Case-Book Series,” 1, Scott Papers, box 1 (hereafter cited as “Scott, ‘Editor and Publisher’”).

14 , Hall, Magic Mirror, 215–16Google Scholar (emphasis in original). Scott's involvement in the ABA is found in Finch's notes for his biography under the heading “American Bar Association,” Scott Papers, box 69.

15 For Scott's role in developing the West casebooks, see Charles W. Ames to George P. Costigan, Jr., Mar. 5, 1910, Scott Papers, box 2. James B. Ames to James B. Scott, Mar. 31, 1906, Scott Papers, box 1.

16 Paquete Habana n United States, 175 U.S. 677 (1899). Scott, James B., “International Law in Legal Education,” Columbia Law Renew 14 (June 1904): 409–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quote from 414.

17 Scott, James B., “The Legal Nature of International Law,” The American Journal of International Law 1 (Oct. 1907): 831–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quote from 838–39. Hereafter The American journal of International Law will be noted as AJIL.

18 , Scott, “International Law in Legal Education,” 409–22.Google Scholar On international law at Harvard, Stevens notes that a “few of the national schools tried to be less professional than Harvard by offering courses in such areas as international law, comparative law, and jurisprudence.” Stevens also states that when Joseph Beale went from Harvard to the University of Chicago (to be dean of its law school) and discovered that Chicago intended to teach international law, “Beale was horrified. ‘We have no such subjects in our curriculum,’ he announced, with an air of finality.” , Stevens, Law School, 39–40Google Scholar, 48n41. But in 1898, Harvard Law School established the Bemis Professorship in International Law and offered the course as an elective. , Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, 395.Google Scholar

19 , Scott, “International Law in Legal Education,” 417.Google ScholarScott, James B., Cases on International Law (St. Paul, MN, 1906), vi.Google Scholar Scott's casebooks, also cited in notes 51 and 52, went through various updates without clearly marked edition or volume numbers. Researchers should thus pay close attention to the publication year. James B. Scott to Nicolas Politis, Feb. 13, 1913, Scott Papers, box 6. Root had similar views. See Marchand, C. Roland, The American Peace Morement and Social Keform, 1898–1918 (Princeton, 1972), 70–72Google Scholar, and , Herman, Eleven Against War, 43.Google Scholar Ironically, the term “legalist” is used as a pejorative by George F. Kennan and most realist historians; international lawyers to them are simply one group of idealistic amateurs who meddled in foreign affairs. Kennan, George F., American Diplomacy, expanded ed. (Chicago, 1984)Google Scholar.

20 , Scott, “Legal Nature of International Law,” AJIL, 838–39.Google Scholar, Scott, “Editor and Publisher,” 1Google Scholar.

21 Scott, James B., “The Legal Nature of International Law,” Columbia Law Renew 5 (Feb. 1905): 124–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quote from 142. James B. Scott to Eugene Wambaugh, Jan. 28, 1913, Scott Papers, box 8. James B. Scott to Newton D. Baker, July 27, 1915, Scott Papers, box 1.

22 On the First Hague Peace Conference, see Davis, Calvin De Armond, The United States and the First Hague Peace Conference (Ithaca, NY, 1962).Google Scholar Davis viewed both the conference and its arbitration system as failures, a rather harsh judgment moderated thirteen years later in his book on the Second Hague Peace Conference; , Davis, United States and the Second Hague Peace Conference, vii–viii.Google Scholar For the views of others on a world court, see , Marchand, American Peace Movement and Social Reform, ch. 2 (particularly 57–65)Google Scholar, and Patterson, David S., Toward a Warless World: The Travail of the American Peace Movement, 1887–1914 (Bloomington, IN, 1976), ch. 8 (esp. 159–61).Google ScholarScott, James B., “The Proposed Court of Arbitral Justice,” AJIL 2 (Oct. 1908): 772–810CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quote from 774. James B. Scott to William H. Taft, Dec. 2, 1918, Scott Papers, box 8. See also James B. Scott to Albert B. Hart, Feb. 8, 1910, Scott Papers, box 4, for a similar statement.

23 James B. Scott to James L. Tyron, Apr. 16, 1912, Scott Papers, box 34. , Scott, “The Proposed Court of Arbitral Justice,” 810Google Scholar.

24 William Ladd, an early nineteenth-century American pacifist and a leader of the American Peace Society, also thought public opinion was a sufficient sanction for a world court. Kuehl, Warren F., Seeking World Order: The United States and International Organisation to 1920 (Nashville, TN, 1969), 15–20.Google Scholar Many of Scott's contemporaries, including Root and Butler, agreed with Scott (at least until the First World War) that public opinion and not coercion should enforce the judgments of an international tribunal. , Herman, Eleven Against War, 41, 46–47.Google Scholar, Scott, “The Legal Nature of International Law,” AJIL, 844.Google Scholar James B. Scott to Francis Hagerup, May 2, 1915, Scott Papers, box 14. Scott was referring to the variously colored books of documents issued by the participants' foreign ministries during the early months of the war in order to justify their nation's entry into the conflict.

25 For another view of how the case method of legal education affected international law, see , Marchand, American Peace Movement and Social Reform, 58–59.Google Scholar Marchand argues that the method caused lawyers to privilege “judge-made law” over legislation and to divorce the law from its economic and social contexts.

26 For Langdell on law as a science, see , Hall, Magic Mirror, 219–21Google Scholar; and Lagemann, Ellen Condliffe, The Politics of Knowledge: The Carnegie Corporation, Philanthropy, and Public Policy (Chicago, 1989), 83, 90.Google Scholar For Beale, see , Lagemann, The Politics of Knowledge, 74.Google Scholar I would like to thank Alex Roland of Duke University for first suggesting that the books produced by these lawyers were taxonomies and then urging me to consider that the lawyers really were being scientific, at least within their understanding of the term.

27 Friedman, Lawrence M., A History of American Lair, 2nd ed. (New York, 1985), 617.Google Scholar This quote also appears in a leading undergraduate text, , Hall, Magic Mirror, 221.Google Scholar An introduction to the historiography of Gilded Age science and technology can be found in Fleming, James Roger, “Science and Technology in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century” in The Gilded Age: Essays on the Origins of Modern America, ed. Calhoun, Charles W (Wilmington, DE, 1996), ch. 2.Google Scholar For the methodology of the life sciences in the nineteenth century, see Allen, Garland, Life Sciences in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1975), ch. 1Google Scholar; and Magner, Lois N., A History of the Life Sciences (New York, 1979), ch. 12Google Scholar (esp. 342–8). An article that illustrates the pervasiveness of the life sciences in nineteenth-century, middle-class culture is Goldstein, Daniel, “Yours for Science: Th e Smithsonian Institution's Correspondents and the Shape of the Scientific Community in Nineteenth Century America,” ISIS 85 (1994): 572–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar As both Allen and Magner make clear, by the time lawyers were borrowing the methodology of the life sciences, the life sciences were moving away from taxonomy to the more experimental bases of the physical sciences. This shift in methodology by the life sciences helps to explain why modern observers find it difficult to believe that lawyers were really trying to be scientific. Doroth y Ross notes that the social sciences borrowed their methodology from the same Newtonian and Baconian models used by the life sciences; see , Ross, Origins of American Social Science, 17–18, 59–60Google Scholar.

28 The quotation on the life sciences come s from , Magner, History of the Life Sciences, 343.Google Scholar The reference to law comes from , Horwitz, Transformation of American Law, 1870–1960, 17Google Scholar.

29 On the Harvard case method, see , Stevens, Law School, chs. 3–4Google Scholar; and , Hall, Magic Mirror, 218–21.Google Scholar James B. Ames to James B. Scott, Mar. 31, 1906, Scott Papers, box 1; and Charles W Ames to George P. Costigan, Jr., Mar. 5, 1910, Scott Papers, box 2. The letter from Harvard dean James Ames is interesting as it sets out Ames's understanding of the case method, which differs somewhat from Scott's. Ames claimed that Harvard used the “intensive method,” studying in great detail a few subjects, while West was attempting the “extensive method,” studying a greater number of subjects but each in less detail. In essence, Ames was claiming that Scott's use of more classifications was unscientific; in a taxonomy, the fewer categories the better.

30 On Scott's teaching assignments at Columbia, see Goebel, Julius Jr, A History of the School of Law, Columbia University (New York, 1955), 198–99.Google Scholar Nicholas M. Butler to James B. Scott, May 14, 1909, Scott Papers, box 2. Moore's career was very similar to Scott's; one historian has called Moore “an important if uncelebrated ‘servant of power’ from the 1890s through the 1930s.” , Veeser, “Inventing Dollar Diplomacy,” 306Google Scholar.

31 James B. Scott to Elihu Root, Dec. 30, 1905, Scott Papers, box 7.

32 Elihu Root to Nicholas M. Butler, Dec. 18, 1909, quoted in Jessup, Philip C., Elibu Root (New York, 1938), 1:456Google Scholar.

33 For the role of the solicitor, see Working, Richard Hume, The MasterArchitects: Building the United States Foreign Service, 1890–1913 (Lexington, KY, 1977), 288n18.Google Scholar For the relationship between Root and Scott, see , Jessup, Hlihu Root, 1:319–20, 456Google Scholar (quote); and DeBenedetti, Charles, Origins of the Modern American Peace Movement, 1915–1929 (Millwood, NY, 1978), 48, 53–54.Google Scholar For Scott's appointment to the examining board, see , Werking, Master Architects, 123.Google Scholar On the London Naval Conference and the fisheries case, see , Davis, United States and the Second Hague Peace Conference, 308 and 316Google Scholar, respectively. For more details on the fisheries case and a favorable opinion of a participant, see Lansing, Robert, “The North Atlantic Coast Fisheries Arbitration,” AJIL 5 (Jan. 1911): 1–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 Root's instructions are reprinted in Bacon, Robert and Scott, James B., eds., Men and Policies: Addresses by Tilihtt Root (Cambridge, MA, 1926), 308.Google Scholar For Scott's work at the conference, see , Davis, The United States and the Second Hague Peace Conference, chs. 14–15Google Scholar.

35 For the debate over judges, see , Davis, United States and the Second Hague Peace Conference, 265–76.Google ScholarScott, James B., “Work of the Second Hague Peace Conference,” AJIL 2 (Jan. 1908): 1–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quote from 27.

36 On the founding of the American Society of International Law, see , Marchand, American Peace Worement and Social Reform, 39–51.Google Scholar For Foster's role in this process, see Divine, Michael J., John W. Foster: Politics and Diplomacy in the Imperial Age, 1873–1917 (Athens, OH, 1981), 106–07.Google Scholar For the Lake Mohonk Conferences, see , Kuehl, Seeking World Order, 40–41.Google Scholar A recent institutional history of the ASIL is Kirgis, Frederic L., The American Society of International Law's tirst Century, 1906–2006 (Boston, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 For a British scholar congratulating Scott on establishing the first English-language international law periodical, see Lassa Oppenheim to James B. Scott, Feb. 18, 1907, Scott Papers, box 6. Scott's description of his work on the first issue is contained in James B. Scott to David J. Hill, Jan. 28, 1907, Scott Papers, box 37. For Scott's partial payment of the printer's bill, James B. Scott to Edward B. Passano, Mar. 28, 1907, Scott Papers, box 37.

38 For Scott's role in the founding of the American Society for Judicial Settlement of International Disputes, see , Kuehl, Seeking World Order, 144–45Google Scholar; , Davis, United States and Second Hague Peace Conference, 321Google Scholar; and Finch, George A., “Andrew Carnegie–Peacemaker,” 140Google Scholar, Scott Papers, box 67. The unpublished manuscript is a detailed history of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace until Finch's retirement in 1950.

39 James B. Scott to James L. Tyron, Dec. 3, 1910, Scott Papers, box 45. For Lansing's views on national sovereignty, see Lansing, Robert, “Notes on Sovereignty in a State,” AJIL 1 (Jan. 1907): 105–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar During the 1920s, Scott was one of many lawyers who argued that the United States should submit to the jurisdiction of the Permanent Court of International Justice without joining the League of Nations; see correspondence on this subject between Scott and Senator George Wharton Pepper, Scott Papers, box 34. Kuehl divides early twentieth-century internationalists into four classifications: (i) generalists who thought peace was good and some type of international agreement was important to attain it; (ii) “the cautious legalists with their judicial approach,” such as Root, Lansing, and Scott; (iii) advocates of some type of loose international confederation; and (iv) spokesmen for a supernational government. , Kuehl, Seeking World Order, 252Google Scholar and ch. 10. Marchand views these “cautious legalists” as political conservatives and argues that their battle for a world court may have been in reaction to domestic progressives who attacked the independent judiciary; , Marchand, American Peace Movement and Social Reform, 55–57Google Scholar.

40 George A. Finch to Philip C. Jessup, Dec. 31, 1943, Philip C. Jessup Papers, Library of Congress, box A85.

41 For a brief discussion of other pioneers in this “revolving door,” see Schulzinger, Robert D., The Making of the Diplomatic Mind: The Training, Outlook, and Style of the United States Foreign Service Officers, 1908–1931 (Middletown, CT, 1975), 35–39.Google Scholar Amid his other activities in Washington, Scott continued to teach. Although he left George Washington in 1911 and Johns Hopkins in 1916, he returned to academia in 1921, and from then until 1940 he held the chair in international law at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. From 1933 to 1940, he was also a professor at Georgetown's law school.

42 On the founding of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, see , Finch, “Andrew Carnegie–Peacemaker”Google Scholar; and Fabian, Larry L., Andrew Carnegie's Peace Hndowment: Tycoon, the President, and Their Bargain of 1910 (Washington, 1985)Google Scholar.

43 The key role of international lawyers such as Scott in the conservative policies of the Carnegie Endowment during this period has been noted by a number of historians: Chatfield, Charles, The American Pence Movement: Ideals and Activism (New York, 1992), 24–25Google Scholar; , Kuehl, Seeking World Order, 110, 160–61, 206–08Google Scholar; and , Marchand, American Peace Movement and Social Reform, ch. 4.Google Scholar The Endowment provided office space, books, and clerical staff to Scott's Joint State-Navy Neutrality Board; see James B. Scott to Robert Lansing, July 24, 1915, Scott Papers, box 13. In 1914–15, the Endowment funded two organizations in which Scott was active: It gave §20,000 to the Institut de Droit International and §6,500 to the American Society for Judicial Settlement of International Disputes; see Year Book of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace [1914–15] (Washington, 1915), 49–50.Google Scholar During the Paris Conference of 1919, the Endowment loaned the American delegation over 200 volumes on international law that were not in the State Department's library; , Finch, “Andrew Carnegie–Peacemaker,” 633.Google Scholar For examples of Scott delaying articles that discussed matters pending before the Department, see two letters written by Scott on Oct. 26, 1910, to Yale Law School professor Theodore S. Woolsey and Harvard Law School professor George Grafton Wilson, Scott Papers, box 37. For a thoughtful account of two other early foundations, see Raucher, Alan, “The First Foreign Affairs Think Tanks,” American Quarterly 30 (Fall 1978): 492–513CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 In fact, Scott became so identified with Vitoria that, when the artist charged with producing murals of the founders of law for the Department of Justice Building in Washington could find no portrait of Vitoria, he used Scott's face to represent Vitoria.

45 For Scott's appointment as special advisor, see James B. Scott to William J. Bryan, Aug. 11, 1914, Scott Papers, box 13. Scott's suggestion that there be established “a method of procedure and cooperation between the State and Navy Departments” in order to keep neutrality policy firmly in the hands of the State Department (and its new special advisor, Scott) is contained in James B. Scott to Robert Lansing, Aug. 10, 1914, Scott Papers, box 13. Examples of Lansing implementing opinions of the board can be found in Robert Lansing to Woodrow Wilson, Oct. 19, 1914, Foreign Relations of the United States: Lansing Papers, 1914–1920, vol. 1 (Washington, 1939), 104–05Google Scholar; and “Memorandum on Armed Merchantmen,” 584–91, quote from 590. For a brief discussion of the work of the board, see Coogan, John W, The End of Neutrality: The United States, Britain, and Maritime Rights, 1899–1915 (Ithaca, NY, 1981).Google Scholar The Inquiry was the interdepartmental, quasi-official body that Wilson created to develop American postwar policy; for its story, see Gelfand, Lawrence E., The Inquiry: American Preparationfor Peace, 1917–1919 (New Haven, 1963)Google Scholar.

46 On the war crimes issue at the Paris conference, see Willis, James F., Prologue to Nuremberg (Westport, CT, 1982).Google Scholar For Lansing's views and his and Scott's roles, see Hartig, Thomas, Robert Lansing (New York, 1982)Google Scholar; and Smith, Ephraim K. Jr, “Robert Lansing and the Paris Peace Conference” (PhD diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1972).Google Scholar Scott helped prepare the memorandum on the U.S. position on war crimes; see entries for Jan. 22 and 24, 1919, Lansing's desk diary, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division. He and Lansing meet regularly while i n Paris; see, for example, entries for Feb. 27 and 28, and Mar. 5, 26, and 31, 1919, Lansing's desk diary. Lansing's bete noir on the Commission on Responsibility in Paris was the British Solicitor General Sir Earnest Pollack, and Scott worked to moderate this conflict; see entries tor Feb. 3 and 28, 1919, Lansing's desk diary.

47 For Root's key role in the compromise over the selection of judges, see , Herman, Eleven Against War, 52–53Google Scholar; and , Davis, The United States and the Second Hague Peace Conference, 360–63.Google ScholarScott, James B., “A Permanent Court of International Justice,” AJIL 15 (Jan. 1921): 52–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quote from 55.

48 For the histories and purposes of the two organizations, see Scott, James B., “The Two Institutes of International Law,” AJIL 26(Jan. 1932): 87–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Scott's speeches (and sometimes public reaction to them) are contained in box 57 of the Scott Papers.

50 The Supreme Court case that Scott based his proposal on was Missouri v. Holland, 252 U.S. 416 (1920), which involved a migratory bird treaty. Both Finch and Nurnberger explain Scott's strong interest in equality for women as his reaction to how poorly men had treated his sisters when they were receiving their professional training and pursuing their careers. But Scott had a strong devotion to equality in general, and I am inclined to believe that the treatment of his sisters may help to explain why he battled for women's rights in the final two decades of his career but not why he held his belief in equality. For a more general statement of his commitment to equality, see his commencement speech at the University of Maryland, in which he said, “The world is a better place today than yesterday; it will be better tomorrow, but you will have to take it on faith, because it is only in the perspective of centuries that we see the triumphant march of human progress toward equality of rights and of human beings, for high and low, rich and poor, the white, the yellow, the black, and the brown”; Scott, address at the University of Maryland, June 10, 1930, Scott Papers, box 57. Another example of Scott's commitment to equality for groups other than women is his membership in the General Committee of the American Committee on Religious Rights and Minorities, Scott Papers, box 46.

51 On how World War I discouraged many peace activists, see , Chatfield, American Peace Movement, ch. 2 (esp. 27–31).Google Scholar James B. Scott to Charles W. Ames, Dec. 24, 1914, Scott Papers, box 1. Scott, James B., ed., Cases on International Law (St. Paul, MN, 1922), xiiiGoogle Scholar.

52 Scott, James B. and Jaeger, Walter H. E., eds., Cases on International Law (St. Paul, MN, 1937), v.Google Scholar

53 , Hall, Magic Mirror, 221–25.Google Scholar See also, for example, Johnson, John W., American Legal Culture, 1908–1940 (Westport, CT, 1981), chs. 2–4.Google Scholar For a view that these distinctions are without meaning, see Gordon, Robert W., “Legal Thought and Legal Practice in the Age of American Enterprise, 1870–1920” in Professions and Professional Ideologies in America, ed. Geison, Gerald L. (Chapel Hill, 1983), 70–110.Google Scholar Gordon dismisses the traditional categories and substitutes ones based on taking the discourse within the legal profession seriously so as to divide legal history into periods of competing legal ideologies.

54 Wright, Quincy, A Study of War, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1942).Google Scholar Wright took an active role in reviewing articles for the American Journal of International Law during the 1920s and 1930s. See his correspondence with then-editor Finch, in box 2, folder 23, Quincy Wright Papers, Department of Special Collections, Joseph Regenstein Library, University of Chicago. Philip C. Jessup to Quincy Wright, Apr. 10, 1939, Wright Papers, box 2, folder 23.

55 Quincy Wright to Philip C. Jessup, Aug. 21, 1940, Wright Papers, box 3, folder 18.

56 Beisner, Robert L.; From the Old Diplomacy to the New, 1865–1900 (Arlington Heights, IL, 1975).Google Scholar The Harding quote can be found in Warren G. Harding to Earl D. Bloom, Mar. 4, 1923, cited in New York Times, Mar. 6, 1923Google Scholar.