"A confederation is an artificial state, resulting from the more or less complete union of two or more states. This involves the temporary or permanent surrender of some sovereign rights on the part of each of the confederated states which pass to, and are vested in, the artificial state created by the treaty of union, or constitution of the confederacy. The number and importance of the sovereign rights surrendered by the component states will determine the character and strength of the confederacy."3

Confederations are of two general classes: first, those where the real sovereign power is left to the constituent states; and second, those where the real sovereign power is granted to the central government. The United States was a confederation of the first class under the articles of Confederation, and of the second class under the Constitution. Germany and Switzerland are also countries which have passed from the first class into the second.

2 Davis on International Law, pp. 34-5-6.

3 Id., p. 37.

In about all confederations the first power granted to the central government is the control of foreign relations, with the result that International Law is seldom concerned with the constituent states.