Various definitions of International law have been given by judges and writers, from which the following have been selected:

"International law, is understood among civilized nations, as consisting of those rules of conduct which reason deduces, as consonant to justice, from the nature of the society existing among independent nations: with such definitions and modifications as may be established by general consent." 1

"The aggregate of the rules which Christian states acknowledge as obligatory in their relations to each other, and to each other's subjects." 2

"International law, or, as it is sometimes called, the law of nations,' may, therefore, be defined as that body of rules and limitations which the sovereign states of the civilized world agree to observe in their intercourse and relations with each other." 3

"International law may be considered from two points of view, viz.: -

(a) From the philosophical point of view, as setting forth the rules and principles which ought to be observed in interstate relations.

(b) From the scientific point of view, as setting forth the rules and principles which are generally observed in interstate relations."4

1 Elements of International Law, Sec. 14. 1 Woolsey, Sec. 5.

5 Down's Elements of International Law, page 2.

"The law of nations may be defined to be a collection of rules deduced from natural reason, as that is interpreted by those who adopt them, and resting in usage, or established by compact, for regulating the intercourse of nations with each other.

"Rights and obligations are interior between sovereign and people, and are regulated by the municipal law; or exterior, between nations considered as moral persons; and these are regulated by the law of nations." 5

The term "international law," while apparently introduced in its Latin form by Zouch,6 an English admiralty judge of the seventeenth century, was first brought into general use by Bentham, and soon replaced the name of jus gentium and other older names. The great objection to the use of the jus gentium to describe the laws governing the relations between foreign countries, was on account of the previous use of this term, in a different sense, in the Roman law.7