The United States and the World Court as a 'Supreme Court of the Nations'

The hope that international adjudication will some day come to replace international aggression has long been a fond aspiration of mankind, and nowhere, perhaps, has it taken firmer root than in the United States. The US Supreme Court has been held up as a model for the successful adjudication of interstate disputes and for the evolution of a body of revered legal norms. Yet America's own record vis-a-vis international adjudication and the international court has been marked by ambivalence and a sharp dichotomy between rhetoric and deeds.;Integrating legal and historical materials and insights, this volume examines the troubled saga of the US pursuit of the ""Supreme Court of the Nations"" idea, from its early pre-World War I origins through the present post-Nicaragua period of US reserve, disillusionment and reassessment. Spurning a ""morality-play"" interpretive mould, the author pays particular attention to recurrent themes and the roots of their recurrence; the specific cadences and nuances in the ""grand"" and lesser US debates on the Court; the continuities and changes in both partners of the US-Court relationship; and the various prisms through which that relationship might be viewed. In this manner, the contemporary debate on the future contours of the US-Court nexus is illuminated.