the rights, or being held responsible for the performance of the duties, of such State as fixed by International Law. International law, as fixed by international practice, determines in only a very general manner the conditions under which such recognition will be accorded, and there is no legal way in which this recognition, if deemed to be unjustly withheld, may be compelled. Furthermore, the action of one State in this respect, whether favorable or unfavorable, does not control, though it may influence, the action of other States.

As will presently be pointed out one State has no direct concern with the constitutional structure of another State, except, possibly, to assure itself as to the organ which has the authority to speak for the State in its international affairs. From this principle it follows that, to international law, the distinction between governments de facto and governments de jure is without juristic significance. Or rather we may say that a government which is recognized to be de facto is thereby de jure as well so far as its international status is concerned. When, therefore, one government is called upon to accord recognition to another government as the power with which to have dealings concerning a given territory and its people, the only question which the recognizing government needs to ask itself is whether the government which it recognizes is a de facto one to the extent that it is able to fulfill the obligations laid, by accepted international law, upon a government which asks international recognition as the power internationally responsible for what takes place within the territory over which it claims primary political control. President Wilson, therefore, went beyond the ordinary requirement of international practice, when, in the early part of his first administration, he declared that he would give international recognition to no government that might be established in Mexico,

whatever its de facto control might amount to, which was not founded upon the will of the Mexican people and thus, in a constitutional sense, able to read its title clear. More recently, the American Government, through Secretary of State Hughes, has declared that, in the future, it will not give recognition to such South or Central American governments as may come into existence by the illegal or revolutionary overturning of previously existing governments. It will be remembered also, that for considerable periods of time, a number of the other governments of the world, including the United States, refused to have official dealings with the government of Greece after the return in 1920 of King Constantine. Only recently (1924) has Great Britain recognized the Soviet Government of Russia established in 1917, and a number of the other States, including France and the United States, still refuse to accord it this recognition. These instances of non-recognition are sufficient to show how discretionary, as exhibited in international practice, is the obligation of one government to give official recognition to the governments of other States. It appears, indeed, that this discretionary right is now more arbitrarily exercised than it formerly was.

States Not Concerned with the Constitutional Features of Other States. It is not merely with the juristic basis or origin of a State that other States have no concern; they are also, as a technical proposition, indifferent to its form of government, that is, to the distribution of powers amongst the several organs of government as provided for by its system of constitutional law. Each State, when it claims recognition as a member of the international society of States, asserts that it not only has the intention but that it possesses the ability, to fulfill all the duties which International Law lays upon it. Under no circumstances, then, is it permitted to plead a constitutional

non possumus as an excuse for a failure to live up to the full measure of its international responsibilities. The application of this doctrine is of especial significance to Federal States, for it has several times happened that the United States, for example, has found itself placed in a most embarrassing international situation by reason of the fact that the provisions of its own constitutional law with reference to the powers of its individual member States has made it almost, if not quite, impossible to fulfill its international obligations. But the same difficulty can also arise in unitary States, as, for example, when, by treaty, certain obligations to another State are assumed the fulfillment of which requires legislation d' which the legislature refuses to enact. In all such cases it is recognized that the constitutional difficulty of the State is one that is self-created and may not be set up as an excuse for not carrying out the conventional or other obligations which its government has assumed or which are laid upon it by International Law.

It has sometimes been said that one State when dealing with another is presumed to know which organ of that other State is qualified to enter into treaties which will be constitutionally binding upon itself. Thus, for example, it has been asserted that, although the Crown in Great Britain possesses the full treaty-making power, the rulers of that country may be held to know that, in the United States, treaties, after negotiation and approval by the President and his advisers, require to be ratified by the Senate before they become constitutionally operative. This is probably a correct proposition, but it is also correct to say that, in any given case, one State is entitled to rely upon the assertion of the executive head of a State or of his plenipotentiary agent, that he is qualified to negotiate a treaty which will be immediately binding without ad referendum proceedings. The assertion

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thus made might be without constitutional warrant, but the State would none the less be internationally bound, for it could not be held that the other contracting State would be qualified or obligated to determine the question, which might be a very technical one, of the proper interpretation and application of the provisions of the other State's constitutional laws. Thus, for example, the many matters between the United States and China arising out of the Boxer troubles of 1900 were settled not by a treaty but by a "protocol" which, though a very important international agreement, was not submitted to the American Senate for approval. It must be assumed that those who acted on behalf of the United States assured all the other parties concerned that simple approval by the President was sufficient to bind the United States. The constitutional validity of this action has, indeed, never been contested in the United States, but had it been and had the courts of that country declared that, though termed a protocol, the agreement was, in fact, a treaty, and that, therefore, to be constitutionally binding, required the approval of the Senate, China and the other participating Powers would have a basis for a claim that whatever might be the constitutional situation according to its own municipal law, the United States was still internationally bound by the assertion of authority made by its official or organ which had acted as the agency through which negotiations with other States were to be carried on.

As a matter of fact, within recent years the Executive of China has entered into loan agreements with foreign bankers without securing the assent of the Parliament, although the Chinese Constitution has expressly declared that all such loans, in order to be legally binding, must be assented to by the legislature. It is certain, however, that, should China later attempt to deny its obligations

under the loan agreements thus entered into, it would be held that it was internationally estopped from so doing by reason of the fact that the other contracting parties assumed, and were justified in assuming, that the organ of government which China held out as qualified to conduct the negotiations, had the authority which it claimed to have, namely, to act in behalf of, and to bind, the Chinese State.

The proposition, then, comes down to this: Peculiar-, Sulus, ities of constitutional structure of one State are without any international significance to other States. Each State/troposite

as a member of the international society of States, has an organ of government through which it communicates with and enters into contractual and other relations with other States. Whatever undertakings are entered into by such organs are internationally binding upon the States which they represent.

Independence. In International Law "Independence" plays, in considerable measure, the part played by "Sovereignty" in Constitutional Law. In the great majority of cases a body-politic which, constitutionally speaking,

ident.

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has the status of a sovereign State in the internationalcol

world, has also the status of an independent State. But the two ideas are not always and necessarily thus tied together. A number of illustrations will make this sufficiently plain.

In the first place, one may take the case of a colony or province which has repudiated the mother State as its de jure sovereign and has established a government of its own. Such a body, looked at from the point of view of its own constitutional law, is, as we have already seen, a sovereign State. It does not, however, become a State, internationally speaking, until at least one other State has accorded it recognition as such; and this may not happen for a considerable time.