Thank you, for your equally informed and rational response.Thankyou for an intelligent and cogent response and the reference.
The reference however is an an assertion of the author's opinion (or possibly that of his source, a historian) not a court judgement, Law or legal opinion.
Something is not illegal just because an academic thinks it is.
Slightly earlier he notes that the doctrine of continuous voyage and what constitutes contraband would always be (and will always be) subject to interminable dispute.
There were at the time only two relevant jurisdictions as to what or was not legal - relevant in that their opinion would have carried weight with the belligerent powers. One is a UK admiralty court the other is a US court.
http://www.americanforeignrelations...eas-World-war-i-a-critical-turning-point.html
has a readable summary of the US and British practice.
The key issues are:
that what the UK did was no more than accepted practice in time of war and specifically had been accepted by US courts during the ACW, after the UK had sued in them.
that the US accepted the UK actions were reasonable.
I still think that Hobbes has a point there, though.
First of all, what is legal or not is determined by the law as it is either written or practiced by the courts. If there is written law it is the primary source of what is legal or illegal. A court can make an illegal decision that is a decision which is not according to the law it apllied or had to apply but did not.
Of course, law has the problem that it is based on language as medium. And language as a system suffers from a high variety and a low redundancy (in contrast to eg mathematics, which in turn shows a high redundancy and a low variety). That means that it is in part open to interpretation.
That the blockade was illegal is clear if you look at the Declaration of Paris.
Interpreting this text is not that difficult. Obviously there exist goods, which are not contrabands, otherwise there would be no need to make an exception for them. Furthermore they are an exception to the rule. That means that any list of contrabands which would include all or almost all goods (especially things like foodstuff) are not in line with this treaty which was signed and ratified by the UK.2. The neutral flag covers enemy's goods, with the exception of contraband of war;
3. Neutral goods, with the exception of contraband of war, are not liable to capture under enemy's flag;
Since the UK employed a far blockade it was not "effective" as defined by this treaty. Therefore a near blockade had to be in effect.4. Blockades, in order to be binding, must be effective, that is to say, maintained by a force sufficient really to prevent access to the coast of the enemy.
There are other violations of international law, for example, Hague XI, Art. 1 and 2 considering the immunity of postal correspondence, which were committed by the RN.
Whether a US or UK court has decided that this would be legal does not have any impact on its legality. The UK was able to commit these violations of international law, because the US backed them and in the end favoured them over Germany, something your article states, too. It was a clear and simple case of "might makes right".
I doubt that the illegality of the British blockade is seriously disputed. So far I have never come across a source disputing that. But I will look it up and consider legal opinions on the matter, not only those of historians. I admit that international law is not my strongest suit, I am a private lawyer.
Edit: BlondieBC was quicker.
@BlondieBC: I would argue that a neutral France is more realistic than a neutral Russia, if there is not a considerable divergence in events prior to the declaration of war.
Kind regards,
G.
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