Shorter Notices
| Date | 01 June 1962 |
| Published date | 01 June 1962 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070206201700235 |
| Subject Matter | Shorter Notices |
Shorter
Notices
QUEST FOR
SURVIVAL.
The
Role
of
Law
and
Foreign
Policy.
By
Julius
Stone.
1961.
(Cambridge:
Harvard
University
Press.
Toronto:
S.
J.
Reginald
Saunders.
104pp.
$3.50.)
Here
one of
the
great
legal
scholars
of
the
West,
author
in
the
past
of
monumental,
exhaustively
documented
and
annotated, multi-
volume,
tomes
on
international
law
and
jurisprudence,
has attempted,
in
one
slim
monograph without
any
footnotes,
to
present
us
with
major
issues
and challenges
of
contemporary
international
law.
It
is
fitting
that
it
should
be
dedicated
to
Stone's
great
teacher
and
mentor
in
the
-sociological
approach
to
law,
Roscoe
Pound,
formerly
Dean
of
the
Harvard
Law
School
and
doyen
of
Western
legal
philosophers.
As
a
member
of
the
sociological
school
in
his
own
right,
Julius
Stone
is
distrustful
of
absolutes
and
universal
panaceas
for
the
current
ills
of
the
international
society
-
the
sort
of windy
resolutions
that
are
so
often
adopted
at
international
assemblies
and
so
often
ignored
when
the
delegates
return
home
and
find
their
own
national
self-interests
to
run
counter
to
them. Thus
Stone
queries
how
far
we
are
entitled
to
hope
to
contain
by law
the
use
of force
by
nation-states,
by
concentrat-
ing
efforts
on
a single
commandment
against
"aggressive
war-making";
and
he
suggests,
indeed,
that
the
blanket
prohibition
of
force
may
weaken
international
law as
well
as
strengthen it.
Avoiding
at
all
times
the
temptations
to cynicism,
Stone pleads
for
a
recognition
of
the
political,
technological,
and
psychological
forces
which
set
the
context
and
thus the
limits
of
the
feasible
tasks
which
international
law
can
fulfill
in
the
foreseeable
future.
In this
challenging
and
provocative
work
he
summons
us
to
use
the
opportunities
provided by
the
very
fact
of
nuclear
stalemate
for
building
among
states certain
patterns
of
mutual
helpfulness.
[EDWARD
MCWHINNEY]
BRrTAiN,
THE
COMMONWEALTH
AND
THE
EUROPEAN
UNION
ISSUE.
By
Asghar
H.
Bilgrami.
1961.
(Geneva:
Graduate
Institute
of
Inter-
national
Studies.
xv,
147pp.)
This
is
a
brief
but comprehensive
background
to Britain's
approach
to
European
Union while
still
retaining her
loyalty
to
the
Common-
wealth.
Unlike
many
other
writers,
Bilgrami
has
emphasized
that
the
question
can
only
be
solved
when
the ultimate
political
structure
of
the
European
Common
Market
is
determined. Maintenance
of
some
degree
of
sovereignty
is
vital
for
Britain;
this
would
only
be
possible
within a
loose
confederation.
For
all
the
protestations
of
independence
from
Commonwealth
countries,
Britain
remains
primus
inter
pares
in
a
Commonwealth
which would
appear
to
depend on
Britain's
presence
for
survival.
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