Background

Hudson was born in Saint Peters, Missouri, in 1886. He was the son of David Ottmer Hudson, a physician, and Emma Bibb.

Education

After attending William Jewell College in Liberty, Mo. , where he received the B. A. in 1906 and the M. A. in 1907, he graduated from the Harvard Law School in 1910. He received S. J. D. degree at Harvard in 1917.

Career

From 1910 to 1918 he served on the law faculty of the University of Missouri and became an expert on real property law and conveyancing. In 1918-1919 Hudson served in Paris with the international law division of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace, under the aegis of David Hunter Miller. This experience and a subsequent brief term in the secretariat of the League of Nations confirmed the interest in international law that thenceforth dominated his career. Hudson was appointed an assistant professor at the Harvard Law School in 1919 and Bemis professor of international law in 1923.

At Harvard, Hudson immediately took up the study of what was to become his specialty – international adjudication, particularly the then new Permanent Court of International Justice. Numerous publications, including an annual review of that court that appeared in the American Journal of International Law for thirty-seven years (1923 - 1959), brought him world-wide recognition. His treatise The Permanent Court of International Justice (1934; revised edition, 1943) was the standard work on the subject: lucid in style, precise in analysis, and unparalleled in its documentation. Hudson also edited four volumes of World Court Reports (1934 - 1943), an elaborately annotated collection of the court's jurisprudence. These and other pioneering works greatly enlarged public understanding of the court's nature and functions, and generally illuminated the settlement of international disputes.

In this period Hudson was also engaged in the serial compilation, under the suggestive title International Legislation (9 volumes, 1931 - 1950), of the texts of 670 multilateral treaties of general interest signed between 1919 and 1945. This undertaking, inspired by his conviction that such treaties offered the most important and promising means for developing international law, was designed to make such materials more readily available to lawyers and scholars. Like the World Court Reports, the series reflected Hudson's belief that accurate information on the contemporary practice of states and international tribunals was essential to a correct understanding of the role (and limitations) of international law.

Parallel with this enterprise was Hudson's organization and direction of the Harvard Research in International Law (1927 - 1939), a cooperative project to set forth the law on selected topics in a format similar to the restatements of domestic law by the American Law Institute. Originally planned to aid the work of the 1930 League of Nations conference on the codification of international law (at which Hudson was an adviser to the U. S. delegation), the Harvard Research in International Law produced thirteen model conventions, complete with detailed commentary, on subjects including nationality, state responsibility, aggression, and the law of treaties. The collective learning and careful workmanship that went into these texts gave them an international influence traceable in all later codification efforts.

On October 8, 1936, Hudson was elected to succeed Frank B. Kellogg as a judge of the Permanent Court. He participated in the court's work until its judicial activities were suspended in 1940, writing separate opinions in six of the ten cases before it in that period. Among these, perhaps the most notable was his concurring opinion in the case between Belgium and the Netherlands regarding diversion of water from the river Meuse (PCIJ Reports, Series A/B, no. 70, pp. 73-80 [1937]), in which he expounded on the role of equity in international law. Also characteristic of Hudson's judicial thinking was his separate opinion in the case between France and Greece concerning lighthouses in Crete and Samos (Series A/B, no. 71, pp. 117-130 [1937]), which illustrated his insistence that abstract juristic concepts (in this case, sovereignty) must not be applied so rigidly as to reach results discordant with the observed facts of a situation. Between 1940 and 1945, Hudson devoted much time to plans for the postwar reconstruction of international judicial machinery.

Both as a scholar and as representative of the Permanent Court, he took a leading part in discussions prior to the 1945 United Nations conference in San Francisco, and at that conference helped to draft the Statute of the International Court of Justice. This goal achieved, Hudson joined the other members of the old court in a collective resignation, effective January 30, 1946. Hudson was a member (1948 - 1953) and first chairman of the United Nations International Law Commission, contributing much to setting its course and to its early substantive work on codification. From 1953 on, ill health restricted his activities; but he persevered in his writing and consulting work at his home in Cambridge almost until his death there.

Hudson's approach to international law was essentially practical and pragmatic. Unlike such contemporaries as Hersch Lauterpacht and Hans Kelsen, he was not much concerned with the deeps of legal philosophy. Yet he was far more than an able compiler. His concern was with the advancement of an international law that would be workable and effective in a real and imperfect world. This down-to-earth attitude permeated all his work. Energetic, brusque, demanding, Hudson set high standards for students and colleagues alike – at first to their discomfort, later to their enduring regard.

Achievements

• His contributions as teacher, scholar, and judge are commemorated in the Manley O. Hudson gold medal, the highest award of the American Society of International Law, of which he himself was the first recipient in 1956. He was nominated twice for the Nobel peace prize.

Works

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  • Current International Co-operation (Calcutta University readership lectures, 1927)

    (Includes: The growth of international co-operation before...)

  • Progress in International Organization
  • By Pacific Means, The Implementation of Article Two of the Pact of Paris Addresses Delivered at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts College, March 1935
  • The Permanent Court of International Justice,: A treatise,

Connections

On December 7, 1930, he married Janet Norton Aldrich; they had two sons.

Father:

David O Hudson

1856–1926

Mother:

Emma Virginia Bibb Hudson

1861–1943

Spouse:

Jane Aldrich Hudson

1903–2003

Daughter:

Virginia Hudson Gauntlett

1892–1941

Brother:

Carl Bibb Hudson

1888–1918

Brother:

David E Hudson

1894–1946