334 A Positive Century (1815–1914)progress of the Hague Conference, the cornerstone was laid for a Peace Pal-
ace, to house the P.C.A. Carnegie also fi nanced the construction of the Cen-
tral American Court of Justice building— which carries on, though now in
humbler ser vice as part of the San Luis Gonzaga High School in Cartago.
Th e Peace Palace was a more fortunate project. Completed in 1913, it still
houses the P.C.A., along with the later- created World Court.Enforcement—and Unrest
“Rights without remedies are no rights at all,” runs a venerable American
legal cliché. In the eyes of many, law is hardly worthy of the name if no en-
forcement mechanism is available. Austin certainly thought this, in placing
the presence of a sanction at the center of his theory. It has been observed
that the empirical wing of positivism similarly gave a high priority to the
presence of sanctions against wrongdoers. Th e distinctive thing about
international-law sanctions is that they were of a self- help character. Th ere
was no alternative, given the absence of a global sovereign or world police
force. It was accordingly up to injured states to infl ict negative consequences
onto countries that had wronged them, as best they could. Sanctions mea-
sures could be peaceful, taking such forms as suspending the per for mance
of a treaty obligation, downgrading or severing diplomatic relations, or in-
stituting some kind of economic mea sure such as a trade boycott or ban on
investment. But enforcement actions could assume more vigorous forms,
too, such as a resort to “reeking tube and iron shard” (in the words of the
British poet Rudyard Kipling).
Enforcement mea sures involving armed force fell into the legal category
known as mea sures short of war. Th ese typically took the form of armed
reprisals, such as blockades, or of punitive expeditions. It is an aspect of in-
ternational law that has been curiously understudied, for several reasons.
One is that enforcement action occurred sporadically, without forming any
discernible pattern. Another reason for the neglect is that the po liti cal sig-
nifi cance of these actions was oft en not very high.
Th e wrongs, or alleged wrongs, that elicited armed responses were of
varying kinds. In 1885, France took naval action against China, in the form
of a blockade of Formosa, in response to alleged Chinese support for an