Book Review: The International Court and World Crisis
| Author | R. St.J. MacDonald |
| Published date | 01 March 1963 |
| Date | 01 March 1963 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/002070206301800117 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
BOOK REVIEW
103
The
author's
main
point
is
that
man
must
live
in
both
worlds,
constantly
having
before
him
a
model
for
imitation,
but without
losing
sight
of
existential
reality.
The
problem
is
magnified
by
the
fact
that
modern
man
has more
than
one
model,
and Halle
pictures
the
con-
temporary
world as
a
sort
of
Manichaean
struggle
between
a liberal
and
a
Jacobin-Marxist
ideal
of
popular
sovereignty.
Even
though
it
would
seem
that
the
pursuit
of
these
conflicting
traditions
serves only
to
exacerbate
the
divisions
between
nations
that
already
exist
at
a
more
practical
level,
the
alternatives
are
dismissed
as
a
surrender
to
nihilism and
barbarism.
However
the
dilemma
remains
unresolved,
and
it
is
difficult
to
find
in
the
book
any hints
of
specific
prescriptions,
though
it
is
interesting
to
note
that
in
a recent
letter
to
The
Times
(November
5, 1962)
Professor
Halle
takes
issue
with
recent
criticism
of
American
Cuban
policy
in
the
British
press as
"irresponsible
because
it
is
based
on
the
world
as
it
should
be,
while
responsibility
has
to
be
discharged in
the
world
as
it
is."
Apparently
the
chief
practical advan-
tage
of
the
dualist
philosophy
is
that
one
can catch
one's
adversary
out
at
any
given
moment
by showing
him
to
be
in
the
wrong
world.
The
dominant
impression
left
by
this
book
is
one of
academic
fantasy.
The
average
reader
is
likely
to feel
that
he
has
been
trans-
ported back
to
the
mediaeval debate
between
realists
and nominalists,
and
to
wonder
if
any
useful purpose
is
served.
Perhaps
it
should
not
be
dismissed
too
hastily,
however,
for
the
author's former
connection
with
the
Policy
Planning
Staff
of
the
State
Department
serves
to link
his
own views
with
the
almost
classic
tension
between
morality and
realism
in
American
foreign
policy,
and
to
show
how
extraordinarily
difficult
it
must
be
for
the
Russians to
understand
the
American
official
mind.
The
book
has
a
curious
structure,
a
dualism
of
a
different
kind,
an
arbitrary
division
into
two
parts
of
approximately
equal
length
labelled
"text"
and
"amplifications".
The
thirty-eight
sections
of
the
text
have
their
corresponding
sections
in
the
amplifications,
so
that
to
read
it
in
sequence
requires
a
sort
of
literary
ping-pong.
But Princeton
University
Press
deserves
a
minor
accolade
for
a
technical production
that
is
virtually
flawless.
Carleton
University,
Otta'wa
K.
D.
McRAE
THE
INTERNATIONAL
COURT
AND WORLD
CRisIs.
By
Julius
Stone.
1962.
(New York:
Carnegie Endowment
for International
Peace.
Inter-
national
Conciliation
pamphlet
No.
536.
6 4
pp.
35
cents)
What
we
have
here
is
a
splendid
over-view
of
the
principal
prob-
lems
facing
the
World
Court
in
the
second
half
of
the
twentieth
century.
Laymen
and
lawyers alike
will
find
that
Professor
Stone's
non-technical
essay
is
characteristically clear,
concise,
and
reasonable.
He
passes
quickly
over
the
Court's
structure
and
a
few
of
its
leading
cases,
and then bears
down
on
the
question
why
there
has
been
such
a
decline in
judicial business.
He
gives
us
the
following
reasons,
in
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