Integrating legal and historical materials and insights, Professor Pomerance examines in this volume the troubled saga of the U.S. pursuit of the `Supreme Court of the Nations' idea, from its early pre-World War I origins through the present post-Nicaragua period of U.S. reserve, disillusionment and reassessment.

The hope that international adjudication will some day come to replace international aggression has long been a fond aspiration of mankind, and nowhere, perhaps, has it taken firmer root than in the United States. The U.S. Supreme Court has been held up as a model for the successful adjudication of interstate disputes and for the evolution of a body of revered legal norms. Yet America's own record "vis-a-vis" international adjudication and the International Court has been marked by ambivalence and a sharp dichotomy between rhetoric and deeds. Integrating legal and historical materials and insights, Professor Pomerance examines in this volume the troubled saga of the U.S. pursuit of the Supreme Court of the Nations' idea, from its early pre-World War I origins through the present post-"Nicaragua" period of U.S. reserve, disillusionment and reassessment. Spurning a morality-play' interpretive mold, the author pays particular attention to recurrent themes and the roots of their recurrence; the specific cadences and nuances in the grand' and lesser U.S. debates on the Court; the continuities and changes in "both" partners of the U.S.-Court relationship; and the various prisms through which that relationship might be viewed. In this manner, the important contemporary debate on the future contours of the U.S.-Court nexus is sharply illuminated.

Traces the World Court from the Hague Conference of 1899 and shows its development through World War I, the League of Nations, World War II, and the cold war up to the contemporary challenges of East Timor and Kosovo. Also distinguishes between the nation-state oriented work of the World Court nad the work of the International Criminal Court which was proposed in 1998 to prosecute individual war criminals like Milosevic and others coming out the the conflicts of the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Discusses the common problem that World Court and the ICC have: resistance in Washington to the international rule of law, especially when it comes to authority surrounding the use of force.

Excerpt from A World Court in the Light of the United States Supreme Court Humanity has long sought to ward off the ravages and burdens that result from war. The lake dwellers of Switzerland tried to protect themselves against the attack of strangers by building their dwellings above the water on piles far from the shore. The Romans, at the height of their prosperity, built a line of fortifications, Limes Imperii Romani, from the Rhine to the Danube. Those fortifications, inside of which were the medicinal springs of the Taunus region, served against the barbarians of the north as the connecting link between those two rivers that were the northern boulevards on the continent of Europe of the Roman Empire. The Chinese Empire built a long wall extending from the sea inland, for hundreds and hundreds of miles, to keep out the barbarians of the north of Asia. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The law of nations and the Constitution -- The law merchant and the Constitution -- The law of state-state relations and the Constitution -- The law of state-state relations in federal courts -- The law maritime and the Constitution -- Modern customary international law -- The inadequacy of existing theories of customary -- Judicial enforcement of customary international law against foreign nations -- Judicial enforcement of customary international law against the United States -- Judicial enforcement of customary international law against U.S. states