A court of lost appeal: The United States and the idea and institution of a World Court to 1985

This study inquires into change over time in the relations between the United States and the idea and institution of the World Court. It involves the examination of the foreign policy concerns and the domestic constraints (i.e., both Aussenpolitik and Innenpolitik factors) of the U.S. Methodologically, it employs both legal and political analyses within an historical framework.; The central propositions of this study are that in the formulation of American foreign policy account has been taken of legal, moral and national interest factors; that the particular role the U.S. was to assume in any given period was determined, largely, according to the interaction of these parameters, and the place allocated to each in a system dominated by any one of them; and that this interaction makes it possible to discern three distinct patterns, corresponding to three different periods in the relations of the U.S. and the idea and institution of the World Court.; The first period begins around the middle of the nineteenth century (and not with the 1794 Jay Treaty) and ends with World War I. During this period the creation of a juridical world order was taken as a central policy option, viewed as compatible with the American national interest as well as with moral notions. The interwar period corresponds to the second pattern of the relationship studied. Having rejected the Wilsonian vision of a moralistic world order, the U.S. settled into the unsettling policy of indecision as to the nature and scope of its foreign policy commitments. During this period, its commitment to Peace through Law acquired symbolic significance, but was never actuated. The third pattern of relationship begins with World War II and persists to date. During this period the concept of the "national interest" dominates foreign policy formulation (i.e., "Realism"), and consequently the American commitment to World Order on the basis of law is peripheral and subservient to the prevailing perceptions of the requirements of the national interest. The study concludes with a critical examination of Realist paradigm and proposes that the time has come to rearrange the relationship between the national interest, morality and law in the making of American foreign policy.