In Full Flower 323tional law. Th e pioneering work in this sphere was Francis Lieber’s summa-
tion of the laws of land warfare, produced at the behest of Lieber’s friend
Henry Halleck, then commanding the Union armed forces. It was com-
pleted in 1863 and promptly promulgated by President Lincoln as a general
order to the Union armies. Lieber’s code attracted a great deal of interest
and admiration in Eu rope. For example, it was the immediate inspiration
behind Bluntschli’s codifi cation of international law. It also inspired the
convening of a conference of legal experts in Brussels in 1874 who engaged
in a similar codifi cation (known as a projet) of the laws of land warfare.
Th e most important codifi cation work came from the Institute of Inter-
national Law. It produced a manual on the law of land warfare in 1880, and
one on the law of maritime warfare in 1913, as well as a manual on prize law
in 1882– 83. Other notable topics that received the attention of the Institute
in the period prior to 1914 included diplomatic immunity, consular- court
jurisdiction in Asian countries, navigation of rivers, territorial waters (spec-
ifying a width of six nautical miles for territorial seas), contraband of war,
and the eff ects of war on treaties. Of par tic u lar interest were two sets of
rules that the Institute draft ed in 1900 on civil wars— on injuries to foreign-
ers during civil confl icts and on the position of foreign governments in cases
of civil strife.
None of these Institute achievements had any offi cial status, since the or-
ga ni za tion was a private body. Th ey were not treaties between states, or laws
promulgated by governments. But the prestige of their draft ers ensured that
careful attention would be paid to them in government circles. At the end of
the nineteenth century, though, and the beginning of the twentieth, a con-
certed eff ort was made to put small- scale codifi cation eff orts of this kind
onto a solid legal footing— and thereby to make a great step forward in the
pro cess of what Oppenheim called “international legislation.” Th e most con-
spicuous initiatives along this line were the two Hague Peace Conferences of
1899 and 1907.
Th e Hague Peace Conferences
Th e earliest multilateral treaties, such as the Declaration of Paris, had typi-
cally been concluded by a small group of like- minded states— with the rest
of the world then cordially invited to adhere to the fi nished product. Only at
the very end of the century was the step taken of inviting the states of the