Book Reviews and Notices : A Modern Law of Nations. By PHILIP C. JESSUP. (New York: The MacMillan Company. 1948. Pp. viii, 236. $4.00.)

• Date: 01 September 1948
• Published date: 01 September 1948
• Author: Willard F. Barber
• DOI: 10.1177/106591294800100342
• Subject Matter: Articles

350
The author observes that although international law is still concerned
primarily with relations between States, modern practice has extended the
range of subjects to include, (a) International institutions and organiza-
tions such as the United Nations and the International Labor Organiza-
tion ; (b) Individual violators of international criminal law established by
conventions dealing with such subjects as the suppression of counterfeiting
currency, drug trafficking, and international terrorism; (c) Individuals
belonging to national minorities who are authorized by treaty to seek re-
dress by appealing to an international court; and (d) colonies, protector-
ates, and territories which have been brought within the scope of several
&dquo;law making&dquo; conventions.
In answering the question, &dquo;Where does primacy or superiority reside, in
international law or state law?&dquo; the author urges that &dquo;... State sovereignty
represents no more than the competence, however wide, which States enjoy with-
in the limits of international law. Here the analogy of a Federal State is useful.
The individual member states of a Federation may enjoy a very wide measure of
independence, but legal supremacy none the less resides in the Federal Consti-
tution. This Federal analogy is important for one further reason. Accepting the
view that primacy belongs to international law, the question arises:-does this
reside in international law as a whole, or only in a particular group of its rules
and principles. The latter is the better view, and on the anology of Federal Con-
stitutions we are entitled to deduce that there is an international constitutional
law which conditions both State law, and the remaining body of international
law much in the same way as a Federal constitutional instrument conditions both
’
,
provincial law and the Federal law flowing from statutes and regulations made
under the constitutional powers.&dquo;
Turning to practical aspects, the author...