338 A Positive Century (1815–1914)It has been observed that liberals tended to insist on the existence of an in-
ternational standard of conduct. Positivist lawyers— with Calvo as their
most prominent champion— opposed this, in favor of a sovereign right on
the part of each state to set its own standards within its territory. Foreign
visitors have only a right not to be discriminated against.
In 1902, it was proposed that this Calvo Doctrine be supplemented by a
new, and more narrowly directed, proposition. Th e initiative came from
Luis María Drago, the foreign minister of Argentina. In response to the
blockade instituted against Venezuela that year, Drago asserted that the use
of armed force to collect state debts was contrary to the principles of Ameri-
can (i.e., Western Hemi sphere) international law. He aft erward expanded
this into a “Drago Doctrine,” which asserted that coercive enforcement mea-
sures can never be taken against states in cases of sovereign indebtedness.
According to Drago, this merely refl ects a key inherent attribute of state
sovereignty: immunity from mea sures of execution (though not necessarily
of adjudication).
Th e nearest that the Drago Doctrine came to realization during this pe-
riod was the adoption of the Porter Convention at the Second Hague Peace
Conference (named for the American diplomat, Horace Porter, who was its
chief advocate). It was a gesture in the direction of the Drago Doctrine. It
prohibited the use of armed force in cases of government debt owed to pri-
vate parties— but not absolutely, as Drago had advocated. Coercion could
still be used if the debtor state either refused arbitration in the matter or
failed to carry an arbitral decision into eff ect. Because of these key provisos,
the Porter Convention was a grave disappointment to Drago (who was a del-
egate to the conference) and to his supporters. Of Latin American states,
only Mexico became a party to the Porter Convention. Nevertheless, the
Porter Convention has— and merits— a modest place in the history of inter-
national law, as the fi rst multilateral treaty to place a legal limitation onto
the resort to armed force.
Fin de Siècle
All in all, international lawyers could— and did— take pride in having done
much to make the world more orderly in the course of the nineteenth cen-
tury. Th ey even made it safer, to the extent that arbitration reduced the pos-