Charles Cheney Hyde

Background

Hyde was born in Chicago on May 22, 1873, the son of James Nevins Hyde, a prominent physician, and Alice Louise Griswold.

Education

Like his father, he attended Yale, where he was an editor of the Lit. After graduating in 1895 he studied international law and American history at Harvard, receiving the M. A. from Yale in 1898 and the LL. B. from Harvard the same year.

Career

Hyde worked as a clerk in the law firm of Holt, Wheeler, and Sidley until 1901, practiced alone from 1901 to 1905, and then organized the firm of Hyde, Hennings, Thulin, Westbrook, and Watson. He was the only international lawyer in Chicago when he began, and he soon developed a practice with the meat-packing businesses. He also represented the Italian consulate in Chicago from 1903 to 1916, and assisted immigrants in passport and naturalization cases. After 1905 he handled extradition cases for Russian refugees.

Hyde's interest in international law stemmed from his studies in law and diplomacy. In 1905 he began work on a project that was published in two volumes, seventeen years later, as International Law, Chiefly as Interpreted and Applied by the United States. Between 1916 and 1920 he concentrated on completing the work, and portions printed in 1918 and 1919 were circulated as confidential documents for the use of American delegates at the Paris Peace Conference.

Hyde was admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1916, reorganized his Chicago law firm in 1920, and opened an office in Washington, D. C. , in November of the same year. In his Washington practice, and later in New York, he represented both businesses and governments, serving as the counsel for Guatemala in a boundary dispute with Honduras in 1931-1932. His reputation brought him to the attention of Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, who selected him to be solicitor for the Department of State in February 1923.

Hyde left office in 1925 to become Hamilton Fish professor of international law and diplomacy at Columbia University, a post he held until his retirement in 1945. Hyde's teaching career had begun in 1899 when he obtained a nonsalaried appointment as lecturer on diplomacy at the Northwestern University School of Law, and in 1901 he developed the first course on international law taught there. Given rank in 1901 and promoted to professor in 1911, he held that title until 1925.

He served as a visiting lecturer at Yale in 1907, at summer institutes at the University of Michigan from 1933 to 1936, and at the United States Army School of Military Government in 1942. Hyde's students remembered his insistence on thoroughness and accuracy and his uncompromising belief in the meaningful applications of international law. That conviction prompted Hyde's involvement in the programs of the American Society of International Law. He attended the 1907 meeting in Washington, D. C. , at which the group was founded, and served as treasurer (1922 - 1925), on the board of editors of its Journal (1910 - 1952), and as president (1946 - 1948).

In editorials and articles in both law reviews and popular magazines, Hyde discussed such questions as war criminals, neutrality, nationality, taxes, maritime law, recognition, aggression, and the laws of war. He believed that the society had become too passive in its attitude toward world events, and during his presidency he worked to fulfill its primary objective of fostering the study and development of international law in the light of constructive new opportunities offered by the United Nations. Acting on this imperative, Hyde issued a revised, three-volume edition of International Law in 1945. The first study had received acclaim as "easily the best treatise on international law in the English-speaking world", and reviewers of the updated study praised its thoroughness and its presentation of the historical foundations on which future international law would be based.

In assessing his life, he noted that his "main task for the past forty years has been a single one – to ascertain and mirror in my books the views of the United States on international law". In 1951 he was named a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, but he died in New York City before he could participate in any cases.

Achievements

• He is famous as a U. S. attorney and authority on international law who was an early advocate of vesting all military power in an international security organization.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Attacks on Unarmed Enemy Merchant Vessels

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • International Law Chiefly as Interpreted and Applied by the United States, Volume 2 (Paperback) - Common

    (This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before ...)

  • International Law Chiefly as Interpreted and Applied by the United States, Volume 1 (Paperback) - Common

    (This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before ...)

Religion

He was a devout Episcopalian, and served as a vestryman.

Politics

He considered himself a liberal Republican.

Views

Hyde belonged to the positivist school of international law, which claimed that a substantive body of evidence existed in the form of precedent and usage, and that this evidence should enable states to declare with reasonable certainty what the law is in any particular case. Yet his honest concern for thoroughness forced him to concede that the erratic behavior of nations provided no concrete basis for categorial conclusions. Hyde also revealed a moralistic perspective in the late 1940's, when he condemned the extension of Communism by the Soviet Union into Eastern Europe as a violation of international law.

Personality

Hyde had a whimsical sense of humor.

Interests

• He loved music, especially Bach and Weber, played the violin, and wrote hymns. He also enjoyed chess, designing women's fashions, golf, and travel.

Connections

On June 2, 1906, he married Mary Paige Tilton in New York City; they had two children.

Father:

James Nevins Hyde

Mother:

Alice Louise Griswold

Spouse:

Mary Paige Tilton

References

• Who Was Who in America: A Companion Biographical Reference Work to Whos Who in America Volume 3 1951-1960