V less assented to the principle that the rules of international law, CHAP. when demonstrated to be such, "will be acknowledged and applied by our municipal tribunals when legitimate occasion arises for those tribunals to decide questions to which doctrines of international law may be relevant."1 3 of the United States In the United States the adjustment of municipal law to meet Practice the obligations of international law has been carried out to exceptional degree. In the first place, the courts have undertake even in the absence of special legislation conferring jurisdicti a upon them, to apply the rules of international law in proper cases presented to them. In the case of the Nereide 2 Chief Justice Marshall declared that the court, until an act of Congress should be passed, was "bound by the law of nations, which is a part of the law of the land"; and in an earlier case, Murray v. The Charming Betsy, the chief justice went so far as to say that the interpretation of an act of Congress should never be such as to violate the law of nations if any other possible construction remained. An even more explicit affirmation of the implied adoption of international law is contained in the more recent case of the Paquete Habana, decided in 1899, in which the court declared that "international law is part of our law, and must be ascertained and administered by the courts of justice of appropriate jurisdiction as often as questions of right depending upon it are duly presented for their determination." After a review of the precedents and authorities on the subject the court found evidence, independently of any express treaty or act of municipal law, of the existence of a customary rule of international law "that coast fishing vessels, with their implements and supplies, cargoes and crews, unarmed and honestly pursuing their peaceful calling of catching and bringing in fresh fish, are exempt from capture as prize of war.' In addition to this assumption of implied jurisdiction by the courts, there exists in the United States a large body of federal legislation directed explicitly to the enforcement of the obligations of international law. While leaving the executive department free 1In meeting the point made by Lord Robert Cecil that international law formed part of the law of England, the court held that there must be evidence to show that the particular proposition had been recognized and acted upon by England or else that "it is of such a nature and has been so widely and generally accepted that it can hardly be supposed that any civilized state would repudiate it." 29 Cranch, 388 (1815); Scott, Cases, 499; Evans, 544. 2 Cranch, 64 (1804). 175 U. S., 677 (1899). Scott, Cases, 12; Evans, 602. to exercise discretion in the determination of what are known as "political questions," Congress has undertaken in other cases to guide the hands of the President and the administrative departments. Moreover, acting in pursuance of authority expressly conferred by the Constitution,1 Congress has enacted penal laws prohibiting citizens and others from committing within the territory of the United States acts for which the nation would be held responsible as a violation of an international duty. The most important of these statutes are, perhaps, the neutrality acts of 1794 and 1818 defining in detail the acts which, if done by individuals upon the soil of the country, would in the judgment of the United States compromise its position as a neutral state.2 'Article I, Sec. 8: [The Congress shall have the power] "to define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations. "" See below, p. 561. CHAPTER VI MEMBERSHIP IN THE COMMUNITY OF NATIONS 1 nations" The persons of international law, or the subjects in whom a. The inhere the rights and obligations defined by the law, are the "family, of states or nations recognized as belonging to the international community. Formal membership in the family of nations appears to be an essential condition of the enjoyment by a state of legal rights and duties. While as a point of theory it is claimed by some writers that a new state, formed from among the existing civilized states, enters as of right into the family of nations, as a practical matter states may be in existence without being admitted to official intercourse with the members of the family of nations, so that pending such admission they have no standing before the law. When, in the seventeenth century, the rules of international law began to take definite shape the membership of the family of nations was limited to the small group of Christian European states which had been maintaining intercourse with one another for several centuries. These states formed, as it were, the charter members of the international community, although this phrase suggests a more conscious sense of association than actually existed. Gradually they widened their narrow circle by admitting into it not only new European states, but the American states of European culture which had grown out of the colonial settlements of the older powers. In 1856, by the Treaty of Paris, the first nonChristian state, the Ottoman Empire, was admitted "to participate in the public law and concert of Europe." By the close of the century Japan was admitted, together with other non-Christian states such as Persia and China, whose membership, however, was qualified and restricted. At the present day there is practically no organized political community in the world that is not under the dominion of international law, whether in its own right or in that of another state.3 'No distinction is made in international law between the two terms, whatever variations of meaning are assigned by political science. 'As, for example, by Hall, International Law, § 2. It should be observed that while the loose organization of the "family of nations" or the "international community" was not regarded as having a L |