Sad experience teaches us that in every war there are numerous violations of law which must unavoidably remain unpunished, but this will not cause the jurist to abandon the authoritative principle which has been violated.
Holland acknowledges that violations of law in war often go unpunished but maintains the importance of legal principles.
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More from Thomas Erskine Holland
It is surely notorious that the delegates of a Power, by agreeing to the draft of a treaty, give to it no international validity, which results only when the treaty has been ratified by their Government.
It would be calamitous should a practice be introduced of attempting to cure the imperfect expression of a treaty by tacking on to it an equally authoritative reasoned commentary, likely, as in the present case, to be enormously longer…
Its admirers have, however, too long preserved it, perhaps sub spe rati, in a state of suspended animation, using it by way of, as they supposed, a convenient handbook of maritime law for the purposes of the present war, though subject to…
I would submit that such a Report as that which accompanies the Declaration of London has no claim to the sort of interpretative authority which has been attributed to it; nor is it desirable that the requisite steps should be taken for…
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