On the Law of Nations

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. 25 cm. [12], 211, [1] pages. Notes. Index. Inscribed with initial by author to Steny Hoyer (senior leader/Democratic Member of Congress from Maryland). A historical and personal account of the role of international law in foreign policy. Daniel Patrick "Pat" Moynihan (March 16, 1927 - March 26, 2003) was a politician, sociologist, and diplomat. He worked on the staff of New York Governor Harriman before joining President Kennedy's administration in 1961. He served as an Assistant Secretary of Labor under Kennedy and President Johnson, devoting his time to the War on Poverty. In 1965, he published the Moynihan Report. Moynihan left the Johnson administration in 1965. In 1969, he accepted Nixon's offer to serve as an Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, and he was elevated to the position of Counselor to the President later that year. He accepted appointment as United States Ambassador to India in 1973. He accepted President Ford's appointment to the position of United States Ambassador to the United Nations in 1975. Moynihan represented New York in the Senate from 1977 to 2001. As the era of totalitarianism recedes, the time is at hand to ask by what rules we expect to conduct ourselves, Senator Moynihan writes in this pellucid, and often ironic, examination of international law. Our founding fathers had a firm grasp on the importance and centrality of such law; later presidents affirmed it and tried to establish international institutions based on such high principles; but we lost our way in the fog of the cold war. Moynihan's exploration of American attitudes toward international law--those of presidents, senators, congressmen, public officials, and the public at large--reveals the abiding reverence for a law of nations and the attempts for almost two hundred years to make international law the centerpiece of foreign and strategic policy. Only in the last decade did a shift in values at the highest levels of government change the goals and conduct of the United States. Displaying a firm grasp of history, informed by senatorial insights and investigative data, elegantly written, this book is a triumph of scholarship, interpretation, and insight.