When the plan of consultative meetings of Foreign Ministers was first proposed at Buenos Aires in 1936, and later developed at Lima in 1938, few considered it as anything more than emergency procedure to meet situations in which prompt and decisive action might have to be taken. There was no thought that a new form of inter-American conferences was being created, that Foreign Ministers would come to the meetings attended by a corps of experts and assistants, that the range of the discussions would cover not a few restricted topics but practically the whole field of inter-American relations, provided only that the particular problem could be regarded as an “emergency” one in the broadest sense of that term. The original conception of a confidential gathering of Foreign Ministers began to break down at the first meeting at Panama in 1939; it broke down still further at the second meeting at Havana in 1940; and still further, indeed almost completely, at the third meeting at Rio de Janeiro in 1942.

At the beginning of the present war the belligerents, of course, set up prize courts. Germany enacted a new Prize Law Code and a new Prize Court Code. But no belligerent, with the exception of Great Britain, has yet published reports of prize cases. True, compared with the enormous amount of prize cases during the war of 1914–1918 in Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy, the number of British prize cases so far reported is comparatively very small. Yet it seems important to investigate these cases to which the science of international law has paid no attention up to now. It is proposed to give here a systematic study of these prize cases, from the points of view of substantive and formal prize law, and of the law of prize procedure.

Law, by whatever definition, is the authoritative voice of the community. Whether it be edicted by monarch or dictator, by representative assembly or the whole people, it speaks in the name of and binds the members of the community. It cannot rest upon the judgment of any member of the community; the essence of law is that it performs a group function. Law cannot speak upon the authority of an individual member; it must represent the authority of the group.

In all three consultative meetings of American Foreign Ministers held since 1939, the American governments have officially recognized the threat of Axis psychological warfare and the possible need of meeting this danger with strong counter measures. As the war has progressed it has become increasingly evident that the independent existence of the American states might well be at stake if this problem is not effectively solved. The Panama meeting (1939) recommended that the American governments “take the necessary measure to eradicate from the Americas the spread of doctrines that tend to place in jeopardy the common Inter-American democratic ideal”; the Habana meeting (1940) made it mandatory that each government take all necessary measures to prevent and suppress such activities; and the Rio de Janeiro meeting (1942), reaffirming prior determinations in the matter, provided for the creation of a body, known as The Emergency Advisory Committee for Political Defense, to study and coördinate such measures.

Hardly another question is of greater practical interest in Latin America today, from the point of view of public order and national security, than the inadmission and expulsion of aliens. The question is specially deserving of reexamination in these days of revolutionary changes in political and legal thought, changes which suggest that legislation designed to safeguard the internal order and external security of a countryshould not be neglected lest it become powerless to cope with situations which those changes may carry in their wake. The historic events now taking place are in no small measure the symptoms of a profound transition in political and juristic ideas throughout the world.

International lawyers have been surprised lately to find the expression “Austro-Hungarians” and “Austrian-Hungarians” appearing in several announcements of the Department of Justice since January 26, 1942. They recall that up to 1867 only Austrian citizenship existed. After that date, when Austria and Hungary formed two separate states linked merely by a common sovereign and in certain matters of foreign representation and war, citizens of the Empire had either Austrian or Hungarian citizenship, never an Austro-Hungarian.1 International lawyers may also have remembered the amusing error in the annex to Article 203 of the Treaty of St. Germain, where an “Austro-Huhgarian Law of December 30, 1907, Imperial Law Collection Number 278” is quoted. Such a law never existed and never could have existed.