EVENING SESSION

NEW YORK, FRIDAY, January 17, 1919.

The Association convened in the auditorium of the Hotel Astor for the purpose of listening to an address by Honorable David Jayne Hill, former Ambassador to Germany.

President Charles E. Hughes presiding.

The President:

Gentlemen of the Bar, ladies and gentlemen: The annual meetings of the State Bar Association afford a welcome opportunity for the expression of opinion upon matters affecting the administration of justice, in which lawyers are especially interested; but they mean much more than that. At this time, particularly, is it important that every instrumentality should be availed of to make whatever contribution is possible to the forming of sound public opinion with respect to those matters of general and international interest, which deeply affect our national welfare, and which now loom so large as we look to the future of the republic.

I believe this is a time when everyone who has aught to say, expertly and thoughtfully, with regard to the fundamental policies of the nation, as it seeks to adjust itself to its international responsibilities, should be heard. We can only make democracy work by interchange of opinion, and it is in gatherings of this sort, where men meet who are students of the problems of our life, that we can hope to make some contribution to the public opinion through which alone, by virtue of its quality, we may be guided safely in the coming years.

To-night we have the privilege of listening to one who has had rare opportunities in a career of distinction to study the questions about which he will talk to us. He has served with

eminent success as Ambassador of the United States. He has been a close student of international affairs. He is a writer and a publicist of eminence. I take great pleasure in introducing to you the speaker of the evening, Dr. David Jayne Hill, who will deliver an address upon the subject: "The Authority of International Law."

Dr. Hill then delivered the following address:

THE AUTHORITY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Bar Association, when your Committee did me the great honor to invite my participation in your meeting, it was well understood, I think, that they were according this privilege to one who is not a member of the Bar. This fact, it seemed to me, might afford a reason for doubting any claim on my part to the attention of this technically learned professional body; but this doubt was promptly and gracefully dissipated by the assurance of your Secretary, that nothing human is foreign to this great profession. And this was confirmed by you, Mr. President, with the suggestion that it would not be inappropriate for me at this time to speak upon some phase of affairs international.

When I consider what noble services have been rendered to the public life of the State and Nation by the great lawyers of the present as well as of the past who have adorned, and still adorn, the membership of this Bar Association; and when I recall the interest it has shown in all the great public movements since its beginning, affecting not only the State and the Nation, but the broad interests of the whole race of man, I cannot doubt that it is quite within the range of the purposes for which this Association was organized to consider at this moment, when the whole world seems halting in the valley of decision, some of those deep human issues

which the Great War has forced upon the attention, not only of all thoughtful men in this nation but in every civilized country of the world.

At no time, perhaps, since history began to be recorded has there existed so profound and so universal a conviction of the value and the necessity of law; and particularly of the restraint of law in controlling the activities of independent sovereign States.

Everywhere the necessities, even more than the volitions, of men have in some form established the authority of the State, whose laws, even though occasionally violated, are regarded as paramount over the populations within their jurisdiction.

A comparative study of law discloses the fact, that witli slight and almost negligible divergences, the great principles of jurisprudence accepted in all the most highly developed communities are not only similar but virtually identical. As a result, the body of customary law common to different nations, to which the Roman jurisconsults gave the name Jus Gentium, and which became the basis of what we now call International Law, was believed, until the events of the Great War disturbed the conviction, to have attained a consistency of content and a degree of general acceptance by responsible States which placed beyond all question its authority as law.

There is, as we all know, some diversity of view as to what constitutes the law in general. If it were otherwise it would be a very stale and unprofitable profession. Some great lawyers, and among them some of the greatest, have held that a law is a rule of conduct that will be enforced by the Courts. This may be a good definition for the practitioner; but it may be said, in opposition, that the law is certainly not the arbitrary, personal opinion of judges, whose office