ation thereof is the affair of the contracting parties
exclusively, and can be ultimately settled by arbitration. But in the
case of general or universal international enactments we have to deal
with conventions between a large number of states or between all states,
and the question, accordingly, now becomes acute.

[Sidenote: International differences as regards interpretation.]

46. The difficulty of solving this question is increased by the fact
that jurists of different nations are influenced by their national
idiosyncrasies in the interpretation of enactments, and are dependent on
the method of their school of law. Here are contrarieties which must
always make themselves powerfully felt. The continental turn of mind is
abstract, the turn of the English and American mind is concrete.
Germans, French, and Italians have learnt to apply the abstract rules of
codified law to concrete cases; in their abstract mode of thought they
believe in general principles of law, and they work outwards from these.
English and Americans, on the contrary, learn their law from decided
cases--'law is that which the courts recognize as a coactive rule' is an
accepted and widely current definition of law in the Anglo-American
jurisprudence; they regard abstract legal rules, which for the most part
they do not understand, with marked distrust; they work outwards from
previously decided cases and, when a new case arises, they always look
for the respects in which it is to be taken as covered by previous
cases; they turn away as far as possible from general principles of law,
and always fasten on the characteristic features of the particular case.
If continental jurists may be said to adapt their cases to the law,
English and American jurists may be said to adapt the law to their
cases. It is obvious that this difference of intellectual attitude and
of juristic training must exercise a far-reaching influence on the
interpretation and construction of international enactments.

[Sidenote: Different nations have different canons of interpretation.]

47. It is because of what has just been explained that the rules for the
interpretation of domestic legislation are different with different
nations. For example, whilst in Germany and France the judge avails
himself more or less liberally of the _Materialien_[1] of a statute in
order to arrive at its meaning, the English judge limits himself to the
strict wording of the text, and utterly refu