a sus familias y al procomún; pudiendo por medio de jueces o jurados prede terminar si realizaron o no el hecho imputable como delito, bien que serían preferibles jueces togados a seanse hombres dedicados especialmente a juzgar, que tienen la garantía de su saber, de su cultura jurídica y social, porque esto parece más lógico que dejar en manos de personas inexpertas, impresionables, indoctas y las más de las veces incultas, la resolución sobre la culpabilidad o inocencia de un ciudadano.

Se duda en muchos casos de la eficacia de los procedimientos positivistas, pero hay que considerar que todas las grandes innovaciones traen consigo desconfianzas y alarmas. En mi país, se tardó mucho en dar crédito al ilustre Dr. Finlay, cuando declaró que la fiebre amarilla la trasmitía el mosquito, y su trasmisión se achacaba seriamente a las más diversas causas; hoy, el descubrimiento ha salvado miles de vidas y se piensa en la ridiculez de las ideas que atribuían la propagación de esta enfermedad a otros factores, y esto mismo ha ocurrido siempre que se ha descubierto la verdadera causa de cualquier problema por resolver y ocurrirá dentro de poco al darnos cuenta de lo desacertados que hemos estado en lo que a la justicia y a la ciencia penal se refiere. La costumbre que tiene como ley gran importancia en muchas legislaciones en lo que al Derecho civil o contractual se refiere es a mi juicio inaplicable al Derecho penal.

El Derecho penal debe estar circunscrito a términos claros, concretos y concisos de aceptarse la Ley Penal tal como está consignada y entendida en los actuales tiempos.

El hombre debe saber todo lo que le está vedado y la sanción que puede corresponderle a la violación de los preceptos prohibitivos de ciertos actos, mucho más cuando en la actualidad hay una serie de delitos estrechamente convencionales que no corresponden a lo que a estos efectos podemos designar como delitos naturales y que son más que nada el producto de necesidades muchas veces transitorias y que por lo mismo en muchos casos sería difícil de señalar los limites de su comienzo como obligación y los de su desuso.

Unamos pues nuestros esfuerzos y pidamos todos aquí y cada uno en nuestro país a los legisladores, a la prensa y al pueblo, que depositen su confianza en la ciencia para que ésta por medio de sus preclaros apóstoles le brinden a nuestro siglo la gloria de asentar la justicia penal sobre una base tan sólida como la roca que gallarda y bravía resiste los embates del mar impetuoso y fiero que al chocar contra ella se tuerce, gime y por fin cae deshecho a sus pies.

OBRAS CONSULTADAS.

Aramburo: La Nueva Ciencia Penal.

Aguilera: Enjuiciamiento Criminal.

Brusa: Derecho Penal.

Blanco: Derecho Penal.

Carrara: Derecho Criminal.

Clark's Criminal Procedure.

D'Acevedo, Castello Blanco: Criminología y Sistemas Penitenciarios.
D'Aguano: La Nueva Ciencia Jurídica.

Dorado: Derecho Penal.

Ferri: La Justicia Penal-Los Nuevos Horizontes del Derecho-Sociología Criminal.

Garófalo: Victimas del Delito.

Lombroso: El Delito.

Liszt: Derecho Penal-La Legislación Penal Comparada.

Mouton: El Deber de Castigar.

Mittermaier: Prueba en Materia Criminal.

Merkle: Derecho Penal.

Pessina: Derecho Penal.

Pastor y Alvira: Derecho Romano.

Pacheco: La Ley del Jurado.

Proal: El Delito y la Pena.

Roëder: El Delito y la Pena.

Reus: Ley de Enjuiciamiento Criminal.

Tarde: La Criminalidad Comparada-Estudios Penales y Sociales.

The CHAIRMAN. Gentlemen, the program for this morning is now concluded.

Thereupon the session adjourned at 12.28 o'clock.

SESSION OF SUBSECTION 1 OF SECTION VI.

SHOREHAM HOTEL,

Tuesday afternoon, December 28, 1915.

Chairman, CHARLES NOBLE GREGORY.

The session was called to order at 2 o'clock by the chairman.
Papers presented:

Inaugural Address, by the Chairman.

How can the people of the American countries best be impressed with the duties and responsibilities of the State in international law? by David Jayne Hill.

The study of international law in American countries and the means by which it may be made more effective. Papers by Jacob Gould Schurman, James W. Garner, and Clement L. Bouvé.

INAUGURAL ADDRESS.

By CHARLES NOBLE GREGORY,

Formerly Dean of the Law School of George Washington University. Gentlemen from all America, you are welcomed here in the interest of many branches of knowledge and of many and varied mutual affairs. In none of higher interest or addressed more directly to our common needs than international law. That great department of human obligation within the past 18 months has found her historic authority assailed, her restraints denied, and her very existence questioned. In the older world the throes of a war widespread and devastating beyond the dreams of malevolence seem to have obscured, if not abolished, the dominion of both international law and municipal, economic, and moral law.

Be assured, gentlemen, not one of these best fruits of civilization shall perish from off the earth. Here in our western world law remains still sovereign and beneficent in her moated castle, still supreme in her sea-girt sanctuary. The Atlantic and the Pacific are the guardians of our peace, and shield even our minds and imaginations from the blistering heat and fevered infection of that appalling contest.

These divisions of the world serve their use in preventing war, pestilence or disaster from becoming universal, just as the watertight compartments of a great ship aid her safety in storms or collision, keep her wounded hulk afloat, and save at least the human freight.

We still turn the wholesome pages of Grotius and Vatell, of Wheaton and Calvo. We quote the placid conventions of the first and the second Hague

conferences, with the ink of the signatures of all nations scarcely dry upon them, and we speak with respect of the solemn agreements and sacred faith of nations.

"Inter arma leges silent," said the late Chief Justice Ryan, "is a fact, not a principle."

We must struggle to prevent facts dominating principles. Unfortunate facts can not change principles, but principles which call to their support, with noble compulsion, the highest and best that is in men-principles must subdue and alter unfortunate facts. Shall the mechanic with his machines which work carnage from the deeps of the sea and the vault of heaven defy and annihilate international law? Shall this mechanic snatch the good shield of law from women and little children, from the aged, the neutral, and the noncombatant, and make them all his aim and his brutal prey? Shall machines abolish law, or shall law not abolish these machines but justly control their operation, saying to them as the Creator said to the destroying flood, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther"?

"They have sought out many inventions," says the book of Ecclesiastes, but in the same verse is written the fine declaration, "God hath made man upright." Let us be sure that the pen is not merely mightier than the sword but than the submarine and the aeroplane and the deadly gas and the floating mine. It can subdue them to their lawful place exactly as it has dealt with those other mechanical inventions, the expanding bullet and the scalping knife.

We can not desert Justice; her voice constrains our minds. We can not desert Humanity; her cry still sways our hearts. International law is merely the formal application of these eternal principles of justice and humanity to international relations.

Our American Republics have three strong bonds holding them together: First. Geographical contiguity. They are the western half of the world. They are divided from the eastern half by the abysses of the oceans.

Second. They each and all had their foundation in a noble struggle for freedom and self-government.

Third. They have embalmed those principles in their paramount law and very form of government.

With these triple ties uniting us it is impossible but that our international relations should have much in common and that wise and temperate consultations of our statesmen, our jurists, and our scholars should add to the peace and security of our Americas and at least tend to temper with justice and humanity the whole conduct of mankind.

The Chair would congratulate the nations of America that they are here represented. He welcomes and congratulates those earnest and gifted men who are here delegated for so high and pacific a task.

Lord Bryce, in his address as president of the British Academy, recently said, with truth: "Mankind increases in volume and in accumulated knowledge and in a comprehension of the forces of nature, but the intellects of men do not grow." Therefore the intellects of men must unite together and jointly essay the intricate tasks of this egregious world. The international congress with its many minds must seek the solution of the international problems.

Lord Bryce said further: "Newspapers and pamphlets will convey to posterity sufficiently and even more than sufficiently the notions and fancies and passions of the moment." So they will; but the chair ventures to hope that into the elevated atmosphere of a congress representing the best of the continents of all America, there may intrude no passion but that for justice, no intemperate zeal except for the good of our fellow men.

Sir Horace Plunkett, who did so much for agriculture in Ireland, was warmly commended because he "made two cocks crow where one cock crowe! before." So may we make two disciples of international law where there was one before.

In considering and seeking to crystallize the just rules of internationa intercourse, the chair ventures to hope that the congress may not be wholly limited by that shop-worn and parochial maxim, "America for the Americans,” but may rise to the higher, broader, and, therefore, better creed of "The worli for all mankind."

HOW CAN THE PEOPLE OF THE AMERICAN COUNTRIES BEST BE IMPRESSED WITH THE DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE STATE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW?

By DAVID JAYNE HILL,

Ex-Ambassador of the United States to Germany.

In the question, "How can the people of the American countries best be im pressed with the duties and responsibilities of the State in international law?" it seems to be assumed that it is, in fact, to the people, and not merely to the governments, that we are to look for a due recognition of those duties and responsibilities. So far as the American countries are concerned, being in theory popular governments, this assumption appears to be well founded; for the governments will in the end be what the people desire.

It is therefore proper and timely to ask, and if possible to answer, the question, in what manner the people of the American countries may best be im pressed with these duties and responsibilities.

I.

First of all it is desirable to make it clear that international duties and responsibilities are necessary corollaries of the true conception of the State: for a repudiation of those duties and responsibilities, or the neglect to fulfil them, would not only be equivalent to the abandonment of the fundamental principles upon which the American States are founded, but it would even render questionable their right to exist.

There are, indeed, two radically different and wholly incompatible conceptions of the nature of the State. On the one hand, it is regarded as the embodiment of irresponsible force, pretending to a sovereignty so absolute and unlimited that it is a law unto itself and may in all circumstances exercise its own unrestricted will. If this be, in truth, the nature of the State, it is difficult to comprehend how it can recognize a duty to anyone except itself, or how it can be induced to accept any responsibility unless it is imposed upon it by superior force. Between States thus conceived there can be no trustworthy legal rela tions, for the reason that such a State does not acknowledge any binding restraint upon its own arbitrary will. Treaties and conventions may be subscribed to, but they have no permanent value, for, being mere temporary acts of will, they may at any time be repudiated by other acts of will having the same value and authority. Such political entities are therefore comparable to the irresponsible forces of nature, which are subject to no control except by the em ployment of other forms of force. States of this kind conquer where they can, and yield to the demands of justice only where they must.