Edwin De Witt Dickinson

Background

Edwin Dickinson was born on May 19, 1887, in Bradford, Iowa. He was the son of William Elihu Dickinson, a farmer, and Edna Jessie Hickock.  

Education

Edwin graduated in 1904 from Cedar Valley Seminary in Osage, Iowa, and then attended Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, where he was a classmate of Herbert Goodrich, later an outstanding federal appellate judge. Dickinson engaged in college debates and also played football.  After graduating in 1909, he taught history at Dartmouth College, from which he received an M. A. in 1911.  In 1918 Dickinson received a Ph. D.  from Harvard. Dickinson received his law degree from the University of Michigan in 1919.

Career

Dickinson's dissertation was his first book, The Equality of States in International Law (1920).  In it he argued that equal sovereignty of states was no more than a theoretical ideal.  It was more useful to examine the practice of states,  geography, and social distinctions in molding the law into a vital force in international relations.  Dickinson thus allied himself with the philosophical pragmatists, then at the height of their influence, rather than with the early American school of jurisprudence, which held that law was a natural force, the same in all times and places, that had merely to be discovered by the judiciary.  

Dickinson assumed a full-time position on the University of Michigan Law School faculty in 1919.  In 1933 he left Michigan to become professor of international law at the University of California at Berkeley.  In 1936 he became dean of that law school, and in 1938 President Franklin D. Roosevelt named him United States Commissioner on the Permanent Commission of Investigation under the Montevideo Protocol.  

In 1944 Dickinson became assistant diplomatic adviser to the United Nations' Relief and Rehabilitation Association and soon afterward became chairman of the United States Alien Enemy Repatriation Hearing Board for Japanese aliens.  Dickinson then returned to the University of California, where he oversaw the planning for a new law schoolbuilding and supervised a faculty of notable legal scholars.  In 1948 he joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania Law School in Philadelphia.  In 1949 Dickinson became president of the Association of American Law Schools.  The following year the United States State Department named him to a commission that was to have been established jointly with Hungary and other nations to investigate asserted violations of human rights by the communist regime in Budapest.  But the Hungarians refused to name a member to the tribunal and the matter died there.  

In 1951 Dickinson was named to the Permanent Court of Arbitration - in effect an honorary position, as the court handled very few cases.  Also in 1951 Dickinson published Law and Peace, which displays a mastery of law,  political science, and history.  When read in connection with his other articles of the time, this work summarizes Dickinson's mature views as a legal scholar.  Dickinson's book, which was an indirect attack on the so-called Bricker amendment, apparently received wide favor from legal scholars.  

In 1952 he was elected president of the American Society of International Law at a time when the society included such diverse figures as John Foster Dulles, Dean Acheson, and Walter Lippmann.  In 1956 Dickinson returned to California, where he taught for a time at Hastings College of Law.  Dickinson wrote to an editor concerning further research on the day he died at his retirement home in St. Helena, California.

Achievements

• Edwin Dickinson was a well-known specialist of international law. He served as a special assistant attorney general and as general counsel to the Mexican-American Claims Commission from 1941 to 1944. While in the Justice Department, Dickinson was instrumental in clearing certain federal employees accused of disloyalty by the Martin Dies Committee on Un-American Activities.  

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Equality of States in International Law

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • Law and Peace

Politics

Although a Democrat, Dickinson spoke out against the Wilsonian argument that the invention of the submarine should not change standards relating to the conduct of belligerents upon the open seas; against Wilson's notion that a League of Nations with one vote per state would be an effective deterrent to international strife; and against the refusal of the United States to recognize communist Russia.

Views

Dickinson had three basic principles.  First, international law must take cognizance of the divergent geographical and cultural factors of each nation.  For example, a landlocked nation can hardly be expected to comply with the rules of law designed for maritime powers.  Second, there is a pragmatically arranged set of rules that are applicable between nations and have full standing as rules of law in the courts of the United States.  Third, nations, including the United States, must not neglect their ability and duty to use the treaty power and international law.  Thus, Dickinson encouraged American participation in international tribunals and agencies.  Otherwise, he argued, the United States would surrender a valuable tool in obtaining the resolution of disputes in a manner favorable to American interests. Dickinson closed Law and Peace with some lines from Walt Whitman that summarize his personal philosophy: "I see Freedom, completely armed and victorious and very Haughty, with Law on one side and Peace on the other.  A stupendous trio.  . "

Connections

On August 30, 1913, Dickinson married his college classmate and "loyal companion in research, " May Luella Hall. They had no children.

Father:

William Elihu Dickinson

Mother:

Edna Jessie (Hickock) Dickinson

Spouse:

May Luella (Hall) Dickinson

classmate:

Herbert Goodrich

References

• Law Among Nations: An Introduction to Public International Law (10th Edition)