MILITARY OCCUPATION AND THE RULE OF LAW1
| Author | R. S. T. Chorley |
| Published date | 01 July 1945 |
| Date | 01 July 1945 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1945.tb02705.x |
MI
LlTARY
OCCU
PATlON
I19
found by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The recommenda-
tions offered by the committee that the League had formed6s consisted
in nothing but requests to the Governments: they ended,
it
seems,
in
the various departmental waste-paper boxes. What
is
needed is
that strong legal aid organisations in several of the leading countries
should take the lead and set up
an
international organisation to act as
a
clearing-house for information and to advise and assist in cases where
this is needed. Here is one more reason why the proposals of the
Conservative Party Committee, as far as legal advice is concerned, fail
to satisfy.
A
strong legal aid organisation in this country could
in
co-operation with the National Association of Legal Aid Organisations
in the
USA.
solve
a
problem that has
for
some time past been urgent
and will be more urgent than ever after the war. That such an organisa-
tion cannot be formed by the poverty-stricken bodies now conducting
legal advice in this country, is too obvious to require proof. In this
respect too it is a peculiar feature of legal aid that the individual can
be protected only
by
an organisation backed by the strength
of
the
entire community.
E.
J.
COHN
MILITARY OCCUPATION
AND
THE
RULE
OF
LAW'
T
is with
a
natural diffidence that
a
common lawyer invades the realms
of the international lawyer and presumes to discuss some of the vital
topics raised by the author of this most topical work. Important
as
are
some of the problems of international law examined in it, there are, how-
ever, even more fundamental considerations involved which touch the
foundation of law and politics, and which
at
the present time
a
common
lawyer may be forgiven for wanting to discuss. He may, moreover, by
his technical inability to consider anything but the broadest aspects of
the matter, be able
to
present some
of
the main points brought out by
Mr. Fraenkell-and thev are, some of them, life and death poinrs-in
such a.way as to be helpful to the general reader.
The long-term occupation
of
enemy territory
is
a
recent phenomenon
in history. In old times, victorious States assumed dominion over those
parts
of
the enemy's territory which they intended
to
annex and evacuated
those areas which their armies had overrun, but which were not within
their territorial ambition.
With the coming of the era of indemnities, occupation until these were
paid, or satisfactorily provided for, became
a
necessary sanction,
as
after
the Franco-Prussian War of
1870.
After the first World War, however,
although, as is well known, the obligation to pay heavy indemnity was
exacted from Germany, the occupation of the Rhinehnd by the forces
Of
the victorious Powers was undertaken rather to provide
a
safeguard for
France and Belgium against further aggression thar as
a
means of
enforcing the indemnity clauses
of
the peace treaty.
I
62
Heber Smith and Bradway,
1.c.
p.
114.
1
Military
Occrrpalion
nnd
the
Rule
of
Law,
1944,
by Ernst Fraenkel,
pp.
x
and
267
(with index)
New
York: Oxford University
Press
$3.50.
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