James Brown Scott and the Rise of Public International Law

Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

Volumn 7, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 151-179

  Hepp, John ^a  

^a WILKES UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 85006526918     PISSN: 15377814     EISSN: 19433557     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S1537781400001857     Document Type: Article

References (171)

1. The best single descriptive volume on law and international affairs for this period is Francis Anthony Boyle, Foundations of World Order: The Legalist Approach to International Relations 1898–1921 (Durham, NC, 1999).
2. See also, for the importance of international law to the first half of the twentieth century, Dorothy V. Jones, Toward a just World: The Critical Years in the Search for International justice (Chicago, 2002).
3. The two most complete biographies of Scott are an unpublished manuscript written bv his assistant George Finch, “James Brown Scott—Adventures in Internationalism,” the only copies of which are in the James Brown Scott Papers in the Georgetown University Library (hereafter cited as “Scott papers”), box 69
4. a dissertation by Ralph Nurnberger, “James Brown Scott: Peace Through Justice” (PhD diss., Georgetown University, 1975).
5. A number of more easily accessible sources provide brief sketches of Scott's life: (i) a short professional biography by Nurnberger in Warren F. Kuehl, ed., Biographical Dictionary of Internationalists (Westport, CT, 1983), 660–62; (ii) the essay on Scott in ‘The Dictionary of American Biography; (iii) Scott's entry in Who Was Who
6. (iv) an article by Scott's assistant Finch, “James Brown Scott, 1866–1943,” American journal of International Law 38 (Apr. 1944): 183–217
7. (v) Scott's obituary, “Dr. James B. Scott, Law Expert, Dead,” New York Times, June 27, 1943.
8. For these international issues, see Calvin DeArmond Davis, The United States and the Second Hague Peace Conference: American Diplomacy and International Organisation, 1899–1914 (Durham, NC, 1975).
9. Zasloff, “Law and the Shaping of American Foreign Policy: From the Gilded Age to the New Era,” New York University Law Review 78 (Apr. 2003): 240–373, quote from 243.
10. Zasloff continues his analysis into the interwar period in “Law and the Shaping of American Foreign Policy: The Twenty Years' Crisis,” Southern California Law Review 77 (Mar. 2004): 583–682.
11. On the “Peace Progressives,” see Robert David Johnson, The Peace Progressives and American Foreign Relations (Cambridge, MA, 1995).
12. On imperialism, see William E. Leuchtenburg, “Progressivism and Imperialism: The Progressive Movement and American Foreign Policy, 1898–1916,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 39 (Dec. 1952): 483–504.
13. For the historiographic debate, see Joseph M. Siracusa, “Progressivism, Imperialism, and the Leuchtenburg Thesis, 1952–1974,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 20 (Dec. 1974): 312–25.
14. Foreign policy is treated in Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877–1920 (New York, 1967), chs. 9–10.
15. On dollar diplomacy, see Emily S. Rosenberg, Financial Missionaries to the World: The Politics and Culture of Dollar Diplomacy, 1900–1930 (Durham, NC, 1999)
16. Cyrus Veeser, “Inventing Dollar Diplomacy: The Gilded-Age Origins of the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine,” Diplomatic History 27 (June 2003): 301–26. On pp. 306–09, Veeser discusses how John Bassett Moore, a leading international lawyer, furthered the objectives of dollar diplomacy in one key arbitration. On the debate between unilateralism and collective action during the Taft and Wilson administrations
17. see Salvatore Prisca, “John Barrett and Collective Approaches to United States Foreign Policy in Latin America, 1907–1920,” Diplomacy and Statecraft 14 (Sept. 2003): 57–69.
18. For a review of the historiography and a proposed new synthesis, see Richard H. Collin, “Symbiosis versus Hegemony: New-Directions in the Foreign Relations Historiography of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft,” Diplomatic History 19 (Summer 1995): 473–97.
19. For the death of the old synthesis, see Peter G. Filene, “An Obituary for ‘The Progressive Movement,”’ American Quarterly 22 (Spring 1970): 20–34
20. Daniel T. Rodgers, “In Search of Progressivism,” Reviews in American History 10 (Dec. 1982): 113–32.
21. For new attempts at synthesis, see Richard L. McCormick, The Party Period and Public Policy: American Politics from the Age of Jackson to the Progressive Era (New York, 1986), ch. 7
22. Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: ‘The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870–1920 (New York, 2003).
23. A recent attempt to find a link between domestic progressivism and its foreign policv is Alan Dawley, Changing the World: American Progressives in War and Revolution (Princeton, 2003).
24. For a critical review, see David Steigerwald, “Progressivism Redux,” Diplomatic History 29 (Jan. 2005): 189–92.
25. Burton J. Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America (New York, 1976).
26. See also Eliot Friedson, “The Theory of Professions: State of the Art” in The Sociology of the Professions: Lauyers, Doctors, and Others, ed. Robert Dingwell and Philip Lewis (New York, 1983), 19–37
27. Michael Burrage and Rolf Tortendahl, ed., Professions in Theory and History: Rethinking the Study of the Professions (Newbury Park, CA, 1990).
28. For the role of Scott's high school in this culture, see David F. Labaree, The Making of an American High School: The Credentials Market and the Central High School of Philadelphia, 1838–1939 (New Haven, 1988).
29. For details of his childhood and the family's many achievements, see Doris Stevens, Paintings and Drawings of jeannette Scott, 1864–1937 (Mount Vernon, NY, 1940), 7–26.
30. Snow was the author of the first casebook on international law and offered Harvard's first course on the subject in 1886–87. Samuel Eliot Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, 1636–1936 (Cambridge, MA., 1936), 376.
31. On postgraduate study in Europe during the Gilded Age, see Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession (New York, 1988)
32. Dorothy Ross, The Origins of American Social Science (New York, 1991).
33. On Butler, see Albert Marrin, Nicholas Murray Butler (Boston, 1976). For Butler's role in the peace movement
34. see Sondra R. Herman, Eleven against War: Studies in American Internationalist Thought, 1898–1921 (Stanford, 1969), ch. 6.
35. For lawyers applying their skills outside the courtroom during this period, see Kermit L. Hall, The Magic Mirror: Law in American History (New York, 1989), ch. 10.
36. Robert Stevens, Law School: Legal Education in America from the 1850s to the 1980s (Chapel Hill, 1983), 78.
37. For Scott's work in the early growth of the University of Illinois Law School, see “Report to Andrew S. Draper, President of the University’ of Illinois, From James Brown Scott, Dated May 1, 1903, For the Year 1902–03,” Scott Papers, box 56.
38. For the competing views of legal education, see Stevens, Law School
39. William R. Johnson, Schooled Lawyers: A Study in the Clash of Professional Cultures (New York, 1978).
40. For an examination of the development of late nineteenth-century legal doctrine, see Morton J. Horwitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1870–1960: The Crisis of Legal Orthodoxy (New York, 1992), chs. 1–3.
41. The quotation comes from an undated, untitled document that begins: “The purpose of Editor and Publisher in undertaking the American Case-Book Series,” 1, Scott Papers, box 1 (hereafter cited as “Scott, ‘Editor and Publisher’”).
42. Hall, Magic Mirror, 215–16 (emphasis in original).
43. Scott's involvement in the ABA is found in Finch's notes for his biography under the heading “American Bar Association,” Scott Papers, box 69.
44. For Scott's role in developing the West casebooks, see Charles W. Ames to George P. Costigan, Jr., Mar. 5, 1910, Scott Papers, box 2.
45. James B. Ames to James B. Scott, Mar. 31, 1906, Scott Papers, box 1.
46. Paquete Habana v. United States, 175 U.S. 677 (1899).
47. James B. Scott, “International Law in Legal Education,” Columbia Law Review 4 (June 1904): 409–22, quote from 414.
48. James B. Scott, “The Legal Nature of International Law,” The American Journal of International Law 1 (Oct. 1907): 831–66, quote from 838–39.
49. Hereafter The American journal of International Law will be noted as AJIL.
50. Scott, “International Law in Legal Education,” 409–22. On international law at Harvard, Stevens notes that a “few of the national schools tried to be less professional than Harvard bv offering courses in such areas as international law, comparative law, and jurisprudence.” Stevens also states that when Joseph Beale went from Harvard to the University of Chicago (to be dean of its law school) and discovered that Chicago intended to teach international law, “Beale was horrified. ‘We have no such subjects in our curriculum,’ he announced, with an air of finality.”
51. Stevens, Law School, 39–40, 48n41.
52. But in 1898, Harvard Law School established the Bemis Professorship in International Law and offered the course as an elective. Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, 395.
53. Scott, “International Law in Legal Education,” 417.
54. James B. Scott, Cases on International Law (St. Paul, MN, 1906), vi. Scott's casebooks, also cited in notes 51 and 52, went through various updates without clearlv marked edition or volume numbers. Researchers should thus pav close attention to the publication year.
55. James B. Scott to Nicolas Politis, Feb. 13, 1913, Scott Papers, box 6. Root had similar views.
56. See C. Roland Marchand, The American Peace Movement and Social Reform, 1898–1918 (Princeton, 1972), 70–72
57. Herman, Eleven Against War, 43.
58. Ironically, the term “legalist” is used as a pejorative by George F. Kennan and most realist historians; international lawyers to them are simply one group of idealistic amateurs who meddled in foreign affairs.
59. George F. Kennan, American Diplomacy, expanded ed. (Chicago, 1984).
60. Scott, “Legal Nature of International Law,” AJIL, 838–39.
61. Scott, “Editor and Publisher,” 1.
62. James B. Scott, “The Legal Nature of International Law,” Columbia Law Review 5 (Feb. 1905): 124–52, quote from 142.
63. James B. Scott to Eugene Wambaugh, Jan. 28, 1913, Scott Papers, box 8.
64. James B. Scott to Newton D. Baker, July 27, 1915, Scott Papers, box 1.
65. On the First Hague Peace Conference, see Calvin DeArmond Davis, The United States and the First Hague Peace Conference (Ithaca, NY, 1962). Davis viewed both the conference and its arbitration system as failures, a rather harsh judgment moderated thirteen years later in his book on the Second Hague Peace Conference
66. Davis, United States and the Second Hague Peace Conference, vii-viii.
67. For the views of others on a world court, see Marchand, American Peace Movement and Social Reform, ch. 2 (particularly 57–65)
68. David S. Patterson, Toward a Warless World: The Travail of the American Peace Movement, 1887–1914 (Bloomington, IN, 1976), ch. 8 (esp. 159–61).
69. James B. Scott, “The Proposed Court of Arbitral Justice,” AJIL 2 (Oct. 1908): 772–810, quote from 774.
70. James B. Scott to William H. Taft, Dec. 2, 1918, Scott Papers, box 8.
71. See also James B. Scott to Albert B. Hart, Feb. 8, 1910, Scott Papers, box 4, for a similar statement.
72. James B. Scott to James L. Tyron, Apr. 16, 1912, Scott Papers, box 34.
73. Scott, “The Proposed Court of Arbitral Justice,” 810.
74. William Ladd, an early nineteenth-century American pacifist and a leader of the American Peace Society, also thought public opinion was a sufficient sanction for a world court.
75. Warren F. Kuehl, Seeking World Order: The United States and International Organisation to 1920 (Nashville, TN, 1969), 15–20. Many of Scott's contemporaries, including Root and Butler, agreed with Scott (at least until the First World War) that public opinion and not coercion should enforce the judgments of an international tribunal.
76. Herman, Elveen Against War, 41, 46–47.
77. Scott, “The Legal Nature of International Law,” AJIL, 844.
78. James B. Scott to Francis Hagerup, May 2, 1915, Scott Papers, box 14. Scott was referring to the variously colored books of documents issued by the participants' foreign ministries during the early months of the war in order to justify their nation's entry into the conflict.
79. For another view of how the case method of legal education affected international law, see Marchand, American Peace Movement and Social Reform, 58–59. Marchand argues that the case method caused lawyers to privilege “judge-made law” over legislation and to divorce the law from its economic and social contexts.
80. For Langdell on law as a science, see Hall, Magic Mirror, 219–21
81. Fllen Condliffe Lagemann, The Politics of Knowledge: The Carnegie Corporation, Philanthropy, and Public Policy (Chicago, 1989), 83, 90.
82. For Beale, see Lagemann, The Politics of Knowledge, 74. I would like to thank Alex Roland of Duke University for first suggesting that the books produced by these lawyers were taxonomies and then urging me to consider that the lawyers really were being scientific, at least within their understanding of the term.
83. Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 2nd ed. (New York, 1985), 617.
84. This quote also appears in a leading undergraduate text, Hall, Magic Mirror, 221.
85. An introduction to the historiography of Gilded Age science and technology can be found in James Roger Fleming, “Science and Technology in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century” in The Gilded Age: Essays on the Origins of Modern America, ed. Charles W Calhoun (Wilmington, DE, 1996), ch. 2.
86. For the methodology of the life sciences in the nineteenth century, see Garland Allen, Life Sciences in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1975), ch. 1
87. Lois N. Magner, A History of the Life Sciences (New York, 1979), ch. 12 (esp. 342–18).
88. An article that illustrates the pervasiveness of the life sciences in nineteenth-century, middle-class culture is Daniel Goldstein, “Yours for Science: The Smithsonian Institution's Correspondents and the Shape of the Scientific Community in Nineteenth Century America,” ISIS 85 (1994): 572–99. As both Allen and Magner make clear, by the time lawyers were borrowing the methodology of the life sciences, the life sciences were moving away from taxonomy to the more experimental bases of the physical sciences. This shift in methodology by the life sciences helps to explain why modern observers find it difficult to believe that lawyers were really trying to be scientific. Dorothy Ross notes that the social sciences borrowed their methodology from the same Newtonian and Baconian models used by the life sciences
89. see Ross, Origins of American Social Science, 17–18, 59–60.
90. The quotation on the life sciences comes from Magner, History of the Life Sciences, 343.
91. The reference to law comes from Horwitz, Transformation of American Law, 1870–1960, 17.
92. On the Harvard case method, see Stevens, Law School, chs. 3–4
93. Hall, Magic Mirror, 218–21.
94. James B. Ames to James B. Scott, Mar. 31, 1906, Scott Papers, box 1
95. Charles W Ames to George P. Costigan, Jr., Mar. 5, 1910, Scott Papers, box 2. The letter from Harvard dean James Ames is interesting as it sets out Ames's understanding of the case method, which differs somewhat from Scott's. Ames claimed that Harvard used the “intensive method,” studying in great detail a few subjects, while West was attempting the “extensive method,” studying a greater number of subjects but each in less detail. In essence, Ames was claiming that Scott's use of more classifications was unscientific; in a taxonomy, the fewer categories the better.
96. On Scott's teaching assignments at Columbia, see Julius Goebel, Jr., A History of the School of Law, Columbia University (New York, 1955), 198–99.
97. Nicholas M. Butler to James B. Scott, May 14, 1909, Scott Papers, box 2. Moore's career was very similar to Scott's; one historian has called Moore “an important if uncelebrated ‘servant of power’ from the 1890s through the 1930s.”
98. Veeser, “Inventing Dollar Diplomacy,” 306.
99. James B. Scott to Elihu Root, Dec. 30, 1905, Scott Papers, box 7.
100. Elihu Root to Nicholas M. Butler, Dec. 18, 1909
101. quoted in Philip C. Jessup, Elihu Root (New York, 1938), 1:456.
102. For the role of the solicitor, see Richard Hume Werking, The Master Architects: Building the United States foreign Service, 1890–1913 (Lexington, KY, 1977), 288nl8.
103. For the relationship between Root and Scott, see Jessup, Elihu Root, 1:319–20, 456 (quote)
104. Charles DeBenedetti, Origins of the Modern American Peace Movement, 1915–1929 (Millwood, NY, 1978), 48, 53–54.
105. For Scott's appointment to the examining board, see Werking, Master Architects, 123.
106. On the London Naval Conference and the fisheries case, see Davis, United States and the Second Hague Peace Conference, 308 and 316, respectively.
107. For more details on the fisheries case and a favorable opinion of a participant, see Robert Lansing, “The North Atlantic Coast Fisheries Arbitration,” AJIL 5 (Jan. 1911): 1–31.
108. Root's instructions are reprinted in Robert Bacon and James B. Scott, eds., Men and Policies: Addresses by Elihu Root (Cambridge, MA, 1926), 308.
109. For Scott's work at the conference, see Davis, The United States and the Second Hague Peace Conference, chs. 14–15.
110. For the debate over judges, see Davis, United States and the Second Hague Peace Conference, 265–76.
111. James B. Scott, “Work of the Second Hague Peace Conference,” AJIL 2 (Jan. 1908): 1–28, quote from 27.
112. On the founding of the American Society of International Law, see Marchand, American Peace Movement and Social Reform, 39–51.
113. For Foster's role in this process, see Michael J. Divine, John W. Foster: Politics and Diplomacy in the Imperial Age, 1873–1917 (Athens, OH, 1981), 106–07.
114. For the Lake Mohonk Conferences, see Kuehl, Seeking World Order, 40–41.
115. A recent institutional history of the ASIL is Frederic L. Kirgis, The American Society of International Law's First Century, 1906–2006 (Boston, 2006).
116. For a British scholar congratulating Scott on establishing the first English-language international law periodical, see Lassa Oppenheim to James B. Scott, Feb. 18, 1907, Scott Papers, box 6.
117. Scott's description of his work on the first issue is contained in James B. Scott to David J. Hill, Jan. 28, 1907, Scott Papers, box 37.
118. For Scott's partial payment of the printer's bill, James B. Scott to Edward B. Passano, Mar. 28, 1907, Scott Papers, box 37.
119. For Scott's role in the founding of the American Society for Judicial Settlement of International Disputes, see Kuehl, Seeking World Order, 144–45
120. Davis, United States and the Second Hague Peace Conference, 321
121. George A. Finch, “Andrew Carnegie-Peacemaker,” 140, Scott Papers, box 67. The unpublished manuscript is a detailed history of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace until Finch's retirement in 1950.
122. James B. Scott to James L. Tyron, Dec. 3, 1910, Scott Papers, box 45.
123. For Lansing's views on national sovereignty, see Robert Lansing, “Notes on Sovereignty in a State,” AJIL 1 (Jan. 1907): 105–28. During the 1920s, Scott was one of many lawyers who argued that the United States should submit to the jurisdiction of the Permanent Court of International Justice without joining the League of Nations
124. see correspondence on this subject between Scott and Senator George Wharton Pepper, Scott Papers, box 34. Kuehl divides early twentieth-century internationalists into four classifications: (i) generalists who thought peace was good and some type of international agreement was important to attain it; (ii) “the cautious legalists with their judicial approach,” such as Root, Lansing, and Scott; (iii) advocates of some type of loose international confederation
125. (iv) spokesmen for a supernational government. Kuehl, Seeking World Order, 252 and ch. 10. Marchand views these “cautious legalists” as political conservatives and argues that their battle for a world court may have been in reaction to domestic progressives who attacked the independent judiciary
126. Marchand, American Peace Movement and Social Reform, 55–57.
127. George A. Finch to Philip C. Jessup, Dec. 31, 1943, Philip C. Jessup Papers, Library of Congress, box A85.
128. For a brief discussion of other pioneers in this “revolving door,” see Robert D. Schulzinger, The Making of the Diplomatic Mind: The Training, Outlook, and Style of the United States Foreign Service Officers, 1908–1931 (Middlctown, CT, 1975), 35–39. Amid his other activities in Washington, Scott continued to teach. Although he left George Washington in 1911 and Johns Hopkins in 1916, he returned to academia in 1921, and from then until 1940 he held the chair in international law at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. From 1933 to 1940, he was also a professor at Georgetown's law school.
129. On the founding of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, see Finch, “Andrew Carnegie-Peacemaker”
130. Larry L. Fabian, Andrew Carnegie's Peace Endowment: The Tycoon, the President, and Their Bargain of 1910 (Washington, 1985).
131. The key role of international lawyers such as Scott in the conservative policies of the Carnegie Endowment during this period has been noted by a number of historians: Charles Chatfield, The American Peace Movement: Ideals and Activism (New York, 1992), 24–25
132. Kuehl, Seeking World Order, 110, 160–61, 206–08
133. Marchand, American Peace Movement and Social Reform, ch. 4.
134. The Endowment provided office space, books, and clerical staff to Scott's Joint State-Navy Neutrality Board; see James B. Scott to Robert Lansing, July 24, 1915, Scott Papers, box 13. In 1914–15, the Endowment funded two organizations in which Scott was active: It gave 520,000 to the Institut de Droit International and $6,500 to the American Society for Judicial Settlement of International Disputes
135. see Year Book of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace [1914–15] (Washington, 1915), 49–50. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Endowment loaned the American delegation over 200 volumes on international law that were not in the State Department's library
136. Finch, “Andrew Carnegie— Peacemaker,” 633.
137. For examples of Scott delaying articles that discussed matters pending before the Department, see two letters written by Scott on Oct. 26, 1910, to Yale Law School professor Theodore S. Woolsey and Harvard Law School professor George Grafton Wilson, Scott Papers, box 37.
138. For a thoughtful account of two other early foundations, see Alan Raucher, “The First Foreign Affairs Think Tanks,” American Quarterly 30 (Fall 1978): 492–513.
139. For Scott's appointment as special advisor, see James B. Scott to William J. Bryan, Aug. 11, 1914, Scott Papers, box 13.
140. Scott's suggestion that there be established “a method of procedure and cooperation between the State and Navy Departments” in order to keep neutrality policy firmly in the hands of the State Department (and its new special advisor, Scott) is contained in James B. Scott to Robert Lansing, Aug. 10,1914, Scott Papers, box 13.
141. Examples of Lansing implementing opinions of the board can be found in Robert Lansing to Woodrow Wilson, Oct. 19, 1914, Foreign Relations of the United States: Lansing Papers, 1914–1920, vol. 1 (Washington, 1939), 104–05
142. “Memorandum on Armed Merchantmen,” 584–91, quote from 590.
143. For a brief discussion of the work of the board, see John W. Coogan, The End of Neutrality: The United States, Britain, and Maritime Rights, 1899–1915 (Ithaca, NY, 1981).
144. The Inquiry was the interdepartmental, quasi-official body that Wilson created to develop American postwar policy; for its story, see Lawrence E. Gelfand, The Inquiry: American Preparation for Peace, 1917–1919 (New Haven, 1963).
145. On the war crimes issue at the Paris conference, see James F. Willis, Prologue to Nuremberg (Westport, CT, 1982).
146. For Lansing's views and his and Scott's roles, see Thomas Hartig, Robert Lansing (New York, 1982)
147. Ephraim K. Smith, Jr., “Robert Lansing and the Paris Peace Conference” (PhD diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1972). Scott helped prepare the memorandum on the U.S. position on war crimes
148. see entries for Jan. 22 and 24, 1919, Lansing's desk diary, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division. He and Lansing meet regularly while in Paris
149. see, for example, entries for Feb. 27 and 28, and Mar. 5, 26, and 31, 1919, Lansing's desk diary. Lansing's bete noir on the Commission on Responsibility in Paris was the British Solicitor General Sir Earnest Pollack, and Scott worked to moderate this conflict
150. see entries for Feb. 3 and 28, 1919, Lansing's desk diary.
151. For Root's key role in the compromise over the selection of judges, see Herman, Eleven Against War, 52–53
152. Davis, The United States and the Second Hague Peace Conference, 360–63.
153. James B. Scott, “A Permanent Court of International Justice,” AJIL 15 (Jan. 1921): 52–55, quote from 55.
154. For the histories and purposes of the two organizations, see James B. Scott, “The Two Institutes of International Law,” AJIL 26 (Jan. 1932): 87–102.
155. The Supreme Court case that Scott based his proposal on was Missouri v. Holland, 252 U.S. 416 (1920), which involved a migratory bird treaty. Both Finch and Nurnberger explain Scott's strong interest in equality for women as his reaction to how poorly men had treated his sisters when they were receiving their professional training and pursuing their careers. But Scott had a strong devotion to equality in general, and I am inclined to believe that the treatment of his sisters may help to explain why he battled for women's rights in the final two decades of his career but not why he held his belief in equality. For a more general statement of his commitment to equality, see his commencement speech at the University of Maryland, in which he said, “The world is a better place today than yesterday; it will be better tomorrow, but you will have to take it on faith, because it is only in the perspective of centuries that we see the triumphant march of human progress toward equality of rights and of human beings, for high and low, rich and poor, the white, the yellow, the black, and the brown”
156. Scott, address at the University of Maryland, June 10, 1930, Scott Papers, box 57.
157. Another example of Scott's commitment to equality for groups other than women is his membership in the General Committee of the American Committee on Religious Rights and Minorities, Scott Papers, box 46.
158. On how World War I discouraged many peace activists, see Chatfield, American Peace Movement, ch. 2 (esp. 27–31).
159. James B. Scott to Charles W. Ames, Dec. 24, 1914, Scott Papers, box 1.
160. James B. Scott, ed., Cases on International Law (St. Paul, MN, 1922), xiii.
161. James B. Scott and Walter H. E. Jaeger, eds., Cases on International Law (St. Paul, MN, 1937), v.
162. Hall, Magic Mirror, 221–25.
163. See also, for example, John W Johnson, American Legal Culture, 1908–1940 (Westport, CT, 1981), chs. 2–4.
164. For a view that these distinctions are without meaning, see Robert W Gordon, “Legal Thought and Legal Practice in the Age of American P'nterprise, 1870–1920” in Professions and Professional Ideologies in America, ed. Gerald L. Geison (Chapel Hill, 1983), 70–110. Gordon dismisses the traditional categories and substitutes ones based on taking the discourse within the legal profession seriously so as to divide legal history into periods of competing legal ideologies.
165. Quincy Wright, A Study of War, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1942).
166. Wright took an active role in reviewing articles for the American journal of International'Law during the 1920s and 1930s.
167. See his correspondence with then-editor Finch, in box 2, folder 23, Quincy Wright Papers, Department of Special Collections, Joseph Regenstein Library, University of Chicago.
168. Philip C. Jessup to Quincy Wright, Apr. 10, 1939, Wright Papers, box 2, folder 23.
169. Quincy Wright to Philip C. Jessup, Aug. 21, 1940, Wright Papers, box 3, folder 18.
170. Robert L. Beisner; From the Old Diplomacy to the New, 1865–1900 (Arlington Heights, IL, 1975).
171. The Harding quote can be found in Warren G. Harding to Earl D. Bloom, Mar. 4, 1923, cited in New York Times, Mar. 6, 1923.