International Law - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition international-law

Definition :

International Law. I. Public Law: The law of nations, strictly so called, was in a great measure unknown to antiquity, and is the slow growth of modern times, under the combined influence of Christianity, intercourse, commerce and war.

II. Private Law (Conflict of Laws): It is plain that the laws of one country can have no intrinsic force, proprio vigore, except within the territorial limits and jurisdiction of that country. They can bind only its own subjects and others who are within its jurisdictional limits; and the latter only while they remain therein. No other nation, or its subjects, is bound to yield the slightest obedience to those laws. Whatever extra-territorial force they are to have is the result not of any original power to extend them abroad, but of that respect which, from motives of public policy, other nations are disposed to yield to them, giving them effect, as the phrase is, sub mutu' vicissitudinis obtentu, with a wise and liberal regard to common convenience and mutual benefits and necessities.

The first and most general maxim stated in international jurisprudence is that every nation possesses an exclusive sovereignty and jurisdiction in its own territory.

Another maxim is, that no state or nation can, by its laws, directly affect or bind property out of its own territory, or persons not resident therein, natural-born subjects or others. This is a natural con-sequence of the first proposition.

From these two maxims flows a third, that whatever force the laws of one country have in another depends solely upon the municipal law of the latter.

Huberus has laid down that all persons who are found within the limits of a government, whether their residence is permanent or temporary, are to be deemed subjects thereof: and that the rulers of every empire, from comity, admit that the laws of every people, in force within its own limits, ought to have the same force everywhere, so far as they do not prejudice the powers or rights of other governments, or of their citizens. One exception to this doctrine is that the courts of this country will not enforce the penal laws of another country. The King of Spain's fortune having been forfeited by the Spanish Government, any situate here remains his property, Banco de Vizcaya v. Don Alfonso de Bourbon, 151 LT 499. the same principle applies to the practice, procedure, and rules of evidence in a foreign Court. Lib. 1, title 3, De Conflictu Legum, s. 2, p. 538. Consult Story's Conflict of Laws, cc. I. and ii.; Wheaton's International Law; Westlake's Pr. Intern. Law; Dicey's Conflict of Laws; and Hall's International Law.