Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 15.pdf/288

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Editorial Department.

istered in the ordinary courts, there remains another doubt. To the ordinary practitioner is international law of any practical use? Such a practitioner certainly does not have occasion to become an expert in this subject. He does not dream of representing his coun try abroad, or of representing his neighbors in Congress, or even of writing to the news papers about the Monroe Doctrine. Even if it be clearly established that international law is not a mere mixture of etiquette, ethics, and fraud, administered ultimately through armies and navies, has the every day lawyer much more use for it than the Hottentot has for snowshoes? This is an important question to which this volume gives several hundred concrete answers. To present all the answers would be to state all the cases, and this, though it would be well worth while, is clearly impracticable. Case after case illustrates the propositions that, al though a problem in international law reach es the general practitioner rather seldom, it may reach him at any moment, and that the opinions of courts upon such a problem are so lawyerlike as to be valuable as part of the intellectual equipment of even such lawyers as may happen never to encounter interna tional questions in the course of practice. In these pages, for example, are decisions showing whether your client can enforce in the courts a claim against a foreign govern ment, a sovereign, an ambassador, a consul, or the domestic servant of an ambassador or of a consul. (Triquet v. Bath, p. 6; DeHaber v. Queen of Portugal, p. 180; Vavasseur v. Krupp, p. 182; Heathfield v. Chilton, p. 189; Parkinson :/. Potter, p. 192; In re Baiz, p. 197; Wilson v. Blanco, p. 206.) Again, can a foreign government maintain an action in a State court, and, if it brings such an ac tion, can it be compelled to give security for costs on the ground that it is a person resid ing without the State? (Honduras v. Soto, .p. 24; Mexico v. Arragoiz, p. 170; The Sap phire, p. 178.) Again, if a company was in corporated by one of the Confederate States during the Civil War, can the company main tain an action in a Federal court? (The Home Insurance Company's Case, p. 59.)

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Space forbids further statement of the problems solved by the cases; but that the problems are interesting and important, and that many of them may easily arise in the course of ordinary practice, is sufficiently indicated by a mere list of topics. Among the topics useful in time of peace are: The immunities of ships of war and other public ships; the right of asylum in le gations and ships of war and merchant ves sels; jurisdiction over offences committed abroad or on the high seas; extradition and interstate rendition; domicil, expatriation, and naturalization. Among the topics useful in time of war are: The immunity of fishing smacks and the like from capture; belligerency; block ade; contraband of war; prize courts; and the effect of war upon trade, ordinary contracts, insurance, agency, partnership, and the Stat ute of Limitations. Topics that have peculiar interest for citi zens of the United States are: The status of the Confederate States during the Civil War, the extent to which the rights and liabilities of the Confederate States passed to the United States, and the question whether Chesapeake Bay is wholly within the territor ial limits of the United States or is partly in the high seas. That the volume is the result of careful research is shown by its presenting, in addi tion to the familiar cases, important decis ions not easily accessible, such as The Alleganean, p. 143, and The Schooner John, p. 677. That the collection has been brought down to date is indicated by the note on p. 674, digesting the Insular Cases, and the note on p. 449, containing the first decision of the Permanent Court of International Ar bitration at The Hague. Valuable as are the cases in the text, and thorough as are the annotations, it must be added that the volume contains another fea ture that is equally useful for the scholarly reader and equally creditable to the intelli gence and enthusiasm of the editor. This is the Syllabus, which consists of forty-one pages of references to American, English, and Continental treatises and other authori