Book Review: Cours de Droit International

Abstract

The notable work of Judge Anzilotti of the Permanent Court of International Justice, first published as a course of lectures during his professorship at Rome some eighteen years ago, is now made available to a larger audience in a French translation by Professor Gidel of the University of Paris. The volume under review is only the first of what is expected to be a three-volume work. It constitutes an introduction to the system, consisting of a discussion of the underlying conceptions and theories of international law. While not concerned with the discussion of many concrete cases, and though practically devoid of footnotes, the book nevertheless covers in a critical way some of the principal problems of theory which have agitated legal scholarship in the field for the past generation. It is partial to the German- Austrian school of thought. The author assumes a positivist, rather than a philosophical, approach, and for that reason the work is likely to make an appeal to the American reader. Though discussing theory in the main, it is informed at all times by a practical sense of realities and thus does not become pedantic.