James Brown was born on June 3, 1866 in Kincardine, Bruce County, Ontario, Canada, the last of five children and second son of John and Jeannette (Brown) Scott. Both parents had emigrated from Scotland to New York in the 1840's, moving to Canada in 1854, a year after their marriage. Scott's father, a stonecutter, was a devout Presbyterian and a harsh disciplinarian; his mother, however, encouraged a spirit of independence in her children. In 1876 the family settled in Philadelphia.
James graduated from the Central High School in Philadelphia (1887). He then entered Harvard, from which he received the A. B. degree, summa cum laude, in 1890 and an Master of arts in 1891. After studying international law at Harvard and at the universities of Berlin, Heidelberg, and Paris, he earned the degree of Doctor of Civil and Canon Laws from Heidelberg in 1894.
Scott's health had suffered in Europe, and in 1894, attracted by the California climate, he opened a law office in Los Angeles. Two years later he organized the Los Angeles Law School (later incorporated into the University of Southern California) and served as its dean until 1899.
In 1899 he was called to the University of Illinois as dean of its College of Law, and in 1903 he became professor of law at Columbia University. His Cases on International Law (1902 and many subsequent editions) firmly established his reputation in this field. Late in 1905, learning that the Solicitor (the chief legal officer) of the State Department had resigned, the twenty-nine-year-old Scott wrote to Secretary of State Elihu Root applying for the post. He was hired the next year after a single interview.
Scott accompanied the American delegation to the Second Hague Peace Conference and subsequently prepared a massive two-volume text and documents, The Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907 (1909). He also participated in discussions which resulted in the formation in 1906 of the American Society of International Law, of which Root was the first president.
Scott devoted considerable energy to the society, serving as its secretary (1906 - 24), as founder and editor of its publication, the American Journal of International Law (1907 - 24), and as president (1929 - 39). He and Root were also associated in the establishment of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 1910.
Scott resigned his State Department post in March 1911 to become the Endowment's permanent secretary and the director of its Division of International Law, positions he held until 1940. Under his direction the division sought to develop international law through a vast program of publications, including collections of documents and of the writings of early legal scholars.
He served as a delegate or technical adviser to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Washington Conference of 1921-22, and the Sixth Pan-American Conference in 1928. An advocate of arbitration and conciliation, he served on eight official commissions between 1928 and 1937 to conciliate disputes between nations.
Until the outbreak of the First World War, he sought to bring into being the tribunal proposed at the Second Hague Conference, and afterward he prepared various proposals for a world organization centered around a flexible court to resolve controversies. He did welcome the provision in the Versailles Treaty for the creation of a judicial body, and he attended, as a legal adviser, the meeting at The Hague in 1920 where a committee of jurists drafted plans for the Permanent Court of International Justice.
He became deeply involved in the work of the European-based Institute of International Law, serving as its president in 1925-27 and 1928-29. Scott lectured widely in Europe and Latin America, as well as in the United States. Over the years he continued to hold academic posts: professor of law and international law at George Washington University (1906 - 11), lecturer at Johns Hopkins University (1909 - 16), professor of international law and international relations at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service (1921 - 40), and professor of international law, jurisprudence, and Roman law at the Georgetown University Law School (1933 - 40). He also wrote several scholarly works.
In 1940 he relinquished most of his posts and retired to Anne Arundel County, Maryland, near Annapolis.
He died of a heart attack at his home in Wardour, Maryland, at the age of seventy-seven.
James Brown Scott was a founder and the first president of the American Institute of International Law. He also was a co-founder and supporter of the Academy of International Law at The Hague. Scott worked successfully to obtain an international convention in 1933 which recognized that the rights of women were equal to those of men in questions of nationality. Besides, he served on a State Department commission on the reform of United States nationality law, which would result in the Expatriation Act of 1907. His famous works: Cases on Equity Jurisdiction (1906), Cases on International Law (1908), The Status of the International Court of Justice (1914) and others.
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(Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)
(Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)
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James Brown Scott was dedicated to the idea of an international legal system. Scott's theories of international law were influenced by the sixteenth-century Spanish theological jurist Francisco de Vitoria, who emphasized morality in international relations, and by the seventeenth-century Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius, who argued that nations like men are governed by natural law, and that a general code acceptable to most governments can be drafted. As a result of his studies Scott developed an almost mystical belief that warfare should give way to legal principles and practices. No Utopian, he realized that international law could only function when governments were ready to accept its rules, and he thus placed his faith in education. He endorsed the principle of conferences to achieve agreements and understandings among governments.
Scott's special ideal, however, was an international court of justice.
He thought, that the League of Nations, feeling and its subordinated principles of justice, reflected a belief that wars should be stopped only after they began, and called for decisions after political rather than legal hearing.
His qualities of refinement and sensitivity were apparent only to his family and close friends; others thought of him as cold and impersonal.
He was fluent in French, German, and Spanish.
Scott married Adele Cooper Reed on September 1, 1901, in Champaign, Illinois. They had no children.
