The International Law of the Future

On February 28, 1942, a conference at Atlantic City was arranged by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to inaugurate discussions on the international law of the future. Since that time, a series of group conferences and smaller meetings have been held in various centers of the United States and Canada, at which nearly 200 men, chiefly Americans and Canadians, participated—judges, lawyers, professors, governmental officers, and men of special international experience. To assure continuity, a few persons—outstanding among them Judge Manley O. Hudson of the Harvard Law School and Professor P. E. Corbett of McGill University—were present at all the meetings, and a small committee prepared the different drafts.The aim of these informal conferences, held over a period of nearly two years, was to arrive at a community of views; and this was achieved when a Statement, growing out of successive drafts, was subscribed to by some 150 of the persons who had participated in the discussions. This document, hitherto strictly confidential, has now been released for publication. Its contents are not to be taken, either in whole or in part, to represent the individual views of any particular person who participated in the discussions.The Statement consists of six Postulates, ten Principles, and twenty-three Proposals, each explained by comment in the light of the history of international law over a period of a hundred years. The Postulates set forth the essential premises, the basic conceptions, of an effective international legal order. The Principles—so to speak, the heart of the Statement —are offered as a draft of a declaration which might be officially promulgated by the statesmen who will build the future peace. The Proposals are indications, suggestions for implementing the Principles, but are not presented as draft provisions for inclusion in an international instrument.It is the object of the present article to summarize and comment upon the Statement's principal features.