Suchergebnisse

There has been much discussion, in the public press and elsewhere, of the refusal of the President to give notice, pursuant to Sec. 34 of the Merchant Marine Act of June 5, 1920, of the termination of so much of the treaties with various foreign governments as restricts the right of the United States to impose discriminating customs duties on imports in foreign vessels and discriminatory tonnage dues on foreign vessels entering the United States. So far as this discussion is concerned with the proposed policy of assisting the American merchant marine by thus discriminating against foreign shipping, it is not within the province of this comment to venture an opinion. So far, however, as criticism has been directed against this action of the President upon the ground that in thus failing or refusing to carry out this direction of Congress he has exceeded his constitutional rights, an interesting and important question of constitutional law, affecting international relations, is presented.

One of the earliest mitigations of the horrors of war, particularly in
its incidence upon private individuals, was the custom of sparing the
inhabitants of a surrendered city in their persons and property, instead of
subjecting them to the rapine and pillage which usually followed a capture
by storm. Even the Mosaic Code made this exception in the midst of its
barbarities, although the doomed cities of Canaan were excluded from the
benefits of the exception. Both the general savagery and the one humane
departure from it are well exemplified by verses ten to sixteen of the
twentieth chapter of Deuteronomy:

10.
When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then
proclaim peace unto it.


11.
And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open
unto thee,,then it shall be, that all the people that is found
therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve
thee.


12.
And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war
against thee, then thou shalt besiege it.


13.
And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thine
hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the
sword;


14.
But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all
that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take
unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies,
which the Lord thy God hath given thee.


15.
Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far
off from thee, which are not of the cities of these
nations.


16.
But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God
doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing
that breatheth.

The field of international law in general is sharply demarked from that of municipal law, but it is the individuals, composing the population of the various states and nations, who furnish the points of contact where international friction may be generated. With the claims of a citizen or subject against his own government, and its officers and agencies, international law naturally has nothing to do. But when an individual asserts a claim against a government not his own, or against the individuals who carry on its operations, such a claim falls on one side or the other of the boundary between international law and municipal law, according to whether the claimant has or has not an adequate remedy in the ordinary courts of the state against which the claim exists.