Summary Of A Scrap Of Paper: Breaking And Making International Law

Hull posits at the end of her book, A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law During the Great War, that Germany did not “speak the same legal language” as Great Britain and France. In order to understand Germany’s legal language, Hull attempts to re-center international law as a fundamental element in the structuring of the belligerents’ legal principles that later influenced internalized mores and external conduct. Hull, a historian of modern Germany, pays special attention to the sociopolitical sources of tension between ‘traditional’ international law and the evolving military needs. Indeed, she argues that “the arguments and justifications used to explain or defend policy are potentially as important as the acts themselves.”

She contends that the legal and therefore social connotations of the invasion of Belgium reveal the stakes for each involved party. Hull’s comparative approach shines in her analysis of contemporary leaderships’ interpretation of the legality of Belgium’s neutrality. Belgium’s neutrality, she argues, stood for “security, self-interest, the principle of law, and public reputation (honoring obligation).” These factors fit into the Allies’ desire for the continuity of a united European standard of diplomacy and war. Hull brings attention to two competing understandings of international law, pacta sunt servanda and rebus sic stantibus, which demonstrate the polarity of Great Britain/France and Imperial Germany’s approach to warfare. Hull describes Belgium’s neutrality and international law, not only as a violation but an “international crime,” with the potential to dictate “postwar international law.” Germany’s denial of the perceived European model of warfare clarifies its outlier status and the danger it posed to the sense of a cohesive ‘civilized’ Europe. Hull deftly shows how this linkage between the notion of continued civilization, which was synonymous with Europe, was similarly challenged by Germany’s incredible violence in

The structural organization of decision-making reflected national priorities. While Hull is not always explicitly clear on the directional flow between state structure, political motivators, and policy-makers’ decisions, she does clearly establish that Imperial Germany’s deferral to the military influenced its evaluation of international law. General Hartmann’s assessment that modern international law was “theoretically constructed,” and incongruent with the actualities of war differed sharply from Attorney General Frederick Smith’s outlook that “laws of war and customs […] were known […] long before the system of modern international law. All these were conceived as deriving their authority from natural reason evidenced by the common consent of mankind.” In examining contemporary personnel’s understanding of the law, Hull skillfully stresses national conceptions of legal supremacy, between the actualities of war or the notion of an ephemeral governing civilized