James Brown Scott and the Rise of Public International Law¹

By John Hepp, Wilkes University

James Brown Scott played a key role in the growth of public international law in the United States from the 1890s to the 1940s. While little remembered today, he was well-known among his contemporaries as a leading spokesman for a new and important discipline. Scott rose from obscure middle-class origins to occupy a prominent and influential place as an international lawyer who shared his legal expertise with seven presidents and ten secretaries of state. By examining his life we gain insight into the establishment of public international law as a discipline and on the era when lawyers qua lawyers began to help shape American foreign policy.
Figure 1: L'homme qui lit by Jeannette Scott. James Brown Scott was the member of the family that his sister painted and sketched most often This version, painted in 1932, is in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which graciously granted permission for its reproduction.
During the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, the United States was at the forefront of the development of public international law. Building on its active assertion of neutral rights in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, many Americans believed that the way to peace was through international cooperation, not unilateral action. It was a period when lawyers and academics advocated that might alone did not make right, and many prominent politicians, including seven presidents, listened. Although international law was not the sole basis for American diplomacy during this period, as the nation's imperial expansion and continued interventions in Latin America highlight, it was a clear and consistent component in both policymaking and public rhetoric.2	1
James Brown Scott was one member of this large community of professionals who hoped to make the world a better place by exporting American values through law, not war. Notwithstanding the important role he played in the first few decades of last century, few know his name today. Even historians of American foreign policy would have trouble identifying his many key positions in the growth of public international law in the United States from the 1890s through the 1930s. But he was well-known among his contemporaries as a spokesman for this new discipline. Scott rose from obscure middle-class origins to occupy an influential place as an international lawyer who shared his legal expertise with seven presidents and ten secretaries of state. By examining his life we gain insight into the establishment of public international law as a discipline and on the era when lawyers qua lawyers began to help shape American foreign policy.3	. . .