International Law as Science. Scott’s Historical Case for Adjudication and the Fight against Collective Security

Abstract

The third chapter revolves around the series of books on US constitutional history Scott published at the closing of the Great War. Therein, he fleshed out his case for the creation of an international court as the best tool toward the achievement of a long-lasting global peace. The first section describes Scott’s Armistice books and their background, explaining the foundations and development of the rationalist legal theory of adjudication that inspired them. The second section goes deeper into the content of the most significant of the books, The United States: A Study in International Organization, in order to contextualize it and relate it to the political debates in which it intervened. The third and closing section is centered on Scott’s role in the debate over the League of Nations Covenant and collective security in the United States.