Abraham Lincoln Quotes
I don’t know anything about the law of nations and I thought it was all right.
At the outbreak of the Civil War the President maintained that the United States was not at war with another nation but was merely putting down a rebellion. When he then ordered a blockade of Southern ports, he was legally blockading his own country. See Thaddeus Stevens.
Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865, 16th President of the United States (Republican, IL), 1961
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Estonia had moved a Russian Soviet era monument to WWII dead Soviet Soldiers from a prime location in the center of their capital to a location outside of town. Russian-speaking Estonians were outraged and fomented violent demonstrations and riots that almost paralyzed the city. At the same time 85,000 Estonian computers were hijacked and used to implement a denial of service attack on some of the major government sites including the main bank, blocking all those webservers from serving normal customers on the Internet. The Prime Minister and other Estonian officials accused the Russians of the cyber-attack and likened it to a blockade which is an act of war under international law. What complicates cyberattacks is that there might have been some Russian nationalists who, with no knowledge of the government could have implemented a denial of service attack where so many accesses to servers are engineered that the servers crash. The perpetrators may have been instigated by the Russian government or not. They could have been any place in the world when they did it.
England in this quotation claims the right to interfere in the internal affairs of another nation if there is mismanagement or crises AND her national interests are affected.
There is no court structure that handles International law disputes. There are some international bodies that hear some types of international law disputes, but no general mechanism. The procedures of these few bodies are very complex and arcane. But worse, there is no body with any power that can enforce any decision that may be reached. Enforcement depends on the good will of the nations involved or the pressure that can be brought to bear by other counties.
Individual countries are bound only by the treaties and compacts that they have signed and ratified. So very often someone will allege that a country has violated international law, but that nation may not have signed the Treaty or Compact that binds them, so thy may not be in violation at all whereas some other country in similar circumstances would be. Also, many countries (including the United States) sign treaties but take exception to some of the provisions. Then there are not bound by that provision. This is what makes International Law so complicated and difficult to understand.
Abraham Lincoln was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln led the United States through its Civil War—its bloodiest war and its greatest moral, constitutional, and political crisis. In doing so, he preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, and modernized the economy.
