Book Review: Judicial Aspects of Foreign Relations

In this sprightly volume, the author has undertaken to subject to critical examination the occasionally professed dependence of the courts-principally English and American-on the political departments of the government (primarily the executive) in the determination of issues involving questions of foreign relations. He sustains vigorously the thesis, which in the last few years has gained increasing currency, that the courts have shown too great a dependence upon the executive, particularly in making their judgements as to the capacity of foreign governments to sue as to the legal effect to be given to laws and administrative acts of such governments, depend upon the irrelevant fact of the political recognition or non-recognition of these governments by the executive of the forum. Interest in the subject was doubtless stimulated by the gyrations of American courts in seeking to pay deference to these governmental policy which refused so long to recognize the Bolshevik government of Russia, and which, down to 1922, assumed to recognize instead Kerensky\u27s ambassador as the authorized spokesman for Russia. The author exhibits an acute power of analysis and with other critics of the New York decisions may derive satisfaction from the recent judgements of the Court of Appeals in Salimoff v. Standard Oil Co., and Goldberg-Rudkowsky v. Equitable Life Ins. Co., both disavowing the factor of political recognition or non-recognition as a criterion for giving or refusing legal effect to Soviet laws and decrees