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55 Am. J. Int'l L. 97 (1961)
Editorial Comments

handle is hein.journals/ajil55 and id is 107 raw text is: EDITORIAL COMMENT THE CONTRIBUTION OF SIR HERSCH LAUTERPACHT TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTERNATIONAL LAW The death of Judge Sir Hersch Lauterpacht on May 8, 1960, brought to an abrupt and untimely end a life marked by a deep dedication to the development of international law and by the breadth of its contribution to the growth of that law. He stood in the first rank of the international lawyers of the common law world; his place among the great international lawyers of the present century is secure. The measure of the regard in which he is held is the great deference which is accorded to his views throughout a major proportion of the world. Having regard to the fact that he published his first book in English only after having taken his first two degrees abroad and having migrated to England and that he died at the comparatively early age of sixty-three, Hersch Lauterpacht's contribution to the development of international law is remarkable both for its amplitude and its richness. The salient characteristic of his legal thought is his sense of the completeness and the movement of international law. If Kelsen, who had been amongst his teachers at Vienna, can be said to be concerned with the morphology of international law, Lauterpacht was a physiologist of the law. His con- cern was very heavily with the development and function of the law of nations, rather than with the exposition of a static positive law resting solely upon state practice, adjudicated cases, and treaties. He viewed the development and growth of international law with cautious optimism but without extravagance or excess. His close contact with the world of af- fairs made him aware of what could be accomplished within the limits of practicality and prudence; political realities were never far from his mind. Moreover, his knowledge of history and of philosophy, as reflected, for example, in the first part of International Law and Human Bights, had given him the virtue of patience and had persuaded him that creation and change in the law could not be rushed. His critics might assert that he was a law reformer and that he failed to distinguish the law as it is from the law as it ought to be, but they overlooked the great pains to which Lauterpacht went in relating new doctrine to the historical continuity of the law. His advocacy of more effective protection of the natural and inalienable rights of man was built both upon a philosophical foundation and upon the protection already accorded by international law to those rights.' Again, in advocating that international law could take a more important r~le with respect to the conditions under which recognition is extended to states and governments, he pointed out that: The practice of States, after allowance has been made for the dis- crepancies due to the political implication of the function of recogni- 'International Law and Human Rights 3-141 (1950).

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