The American Institute of International Law

A Documentary History of the Campaign to Create the American Institute of International Law

The American Institute of International Law was established in 1912 by James Brown Scott and Dr. Alejandro Alvarez, a distinguished Chilean international lawyer. It aimed primarily to foster better relations between the United States and Latin America. Active until 1938, it submitted several recommendations concerning international organizations, including 30 draft projects to the Pan American Union, which placed 27 of them before the International Commission of American Jurists for the Codification of International Law. Among the subjects were statehood, aliens, law of treaties, diplomatic and consular agents, neutrality at sea, asylum, duties of states in the event of civil war, and the peaceful settlement of disputes. No less than thirteen of these drafts were incorporated into the codifications produced by the Commission. This volume documents the campaign to create the American Institute of International Law and reproduces the original proposal and the principal documents leading to the creation of the Institute. In a broader sense, it offers an interesting legal perspective on the history of inter-American relations and the period when international lawyers began to influence the direction American of foreign policy.

James Brown Scott [1866-1943] played a leading role in the establishment of public international law from the 1890s to the 1940s. The author of over 1,000 books and articles, he was a professor, administrator, editor, public lecturer, as well as a lawyer, diplomat and an advisor to seven presidents, ten secretaries of state and several foreign governments. He was also a tireless organizer. In addition to his leading role in the creation of American Institute of International Law, he helped to establish the American Society for Judicial Settlement of International Disputes and the American Society of International Law (ASIL).

"Before Dr. Scott began his crusade, international law as a science had barely emerged from the cloister; indeed, not so many years before it had been taught in connection with theology. The subject is now included in the curricula of many colleges and universities and of the larger law schools in the United States. Specially qualified professors, in the larger institutions more than one, devote their whole time to teaching it. The classes are numbered by the hundreds and the students by the thousands. No statement made by informed leaders of opinion in this and other countries has been or can be made regarding the restoration of peace and order in the world without basing their hopes upon the foundations of international law."
George A. Finch, "James Brown Scott, 1866-1943,"
American Journal of International Law 38 (1944) 217. 38 Am.