Die Sanktionen des allgemeinen Völkerrechts

There is probably no branch of international law which is so calculated to encourage the skeptic as that mass of contradictory precedents, dogmatic assertions, and vague principles which are collected under the common head of "intervention," and perhaps there is no more potentially dangerous ground of intervention than that which is variously described as "self-preservation" and "self-defence." It was in the Caroline case that self-defence was changed from a political excuse to a legal doctrine. At a time when the law has become once more fluid and is undergoing rapid change, a reconsideration of the Caroline controversy, and of McLeod's case to which it is so closely allied, may serve a useful end.