JUS GENTIUM

The law of nations. That law which natural reason has established among all men is equally observed among all nations, and is called the "law of nations," as being the law which all nations use. Inst 1, 2, 1; Dig. ·1, 1, 9; 1 Bl. Comm. 43; 1 Kent, Comm. 7; Mackeld Rom. Law, 1125. Although this phrase had. a meaning in the Roman law which may be rendered by our ex• pre ion "law of nations," it must not be understood as equivalent to what we now call "international law," its scope being much wid• er. It was _originally a system of law, or more properly equity, ~a the red by the early Roman lawyers and magistrates from the common ingredients I in the customs of the old Italian tribes,-those beinll: the nations, gentes, whom they had opportumties ·of.observjng,-to be used in cases where tbe jus oivile did not apply; that is, in case a between foreigners or between a Roman citizen and a foreigner. The principle upon which tliey proceeded was that any rule of law which was common to all the nations they knew of must be intrinsically consonant to right reason, and therefore fundamentally valid and just. From this it was an easy tran• 8ition to the converse principle, viz., that any rule which instinctively commended itself to their sense of justice and reason must be a part of the jua gentium. And so the latter term came eventually to be about synonymous with "equity," (as the Romans understood it,) ·or the system of prmtoi'ian law. Modern jupsts frequently employ the term "jus getitium ·privatum" to denote '{lrlvate international Jaw, or that subject which is otherwise styled the "conflict of laws;" and "ju, ge1"Mm publicum" for public international law, or the systell! of rules govern in i _the intercourse o! nations with each other as l)ersone. [s. 684]