HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION IN INTERNATIONAL LAW AS RELATED TO THE PRACTICE OF THE UNITED STATES

Authors

Malbone W. Graham, University of Texas

Abstract

One of the outstanding results of the Great War, as regards international law, has been the tendency to question the bases of that law and to subject almost every portion of it to a minute examination, to determine its adequacy in governing effectively the relations of states to each other. This wholesale questioning has not confined itself merely to the laws of war and of neutrality-open as most of them may be to objection as a result of the practices in the course of the war-but also to the international law of peace, as regards the doctrine of the equality of states the relative or absolute character of political independence and national sovereignty, the position of semi-sovereign states in the family or society of nations, the status of backward peoples or aborigines and lastly, hut by no means of least importance, as regards the very structure of international society itself. It was inevitable that in any such questioning of the fundamental bases of the law of nations the doctrine and the practice of intervention should not escape this inquiry, and in consequence both have been subjected to a more thorough and systematic examination than ever before in the history of the law of nations. The general results of this inquiry are exceedingly illuminating, as they serve to illustrate poignantly the changed conception of our international relationships and the place which the doctrine of intervention must inevitably play therein. Not only have various treatises appeared examining anew the legal foundations of this doctrine, but the practice of intervention has been extended, either politically, under various pretexts, by the Supreme Council and other European combinations, in regard to old world affairs, or legally, for various purposes within the official competence of the League of Nations. Thus, viewing the doctrine from either its political or legal aspects, there is evidenced a growing disposition on the part of the Great Powers, alike in the eastern and western hemispheres, and the reorganized, legally constituted Society of Nations to extend intervention as a practice, both on legal and political grounds.

Recommended Citation

Malbone W. Graham, HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION IN INTERNATIONAL LAW AS RELATED TO THE PRACTICE OF THE UNITED STATES, 22 Mich. L. Rev. 312 (1924).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol22/iss4/3