Law of nations
← the full American Legal Lexicon
Law of nations common-law
The older name for international law — the customary rules governing how nations, and their diplomats, treat one another.
Technical: The customary body of international law, incorporated into U.S. law; recognized early as part of the law of Pennsylvania in Respublica v. De Longchamps, 1 U.S. (1 Dall.) 111 (1784), and invoked via the 'Offences against the Law of Nations' Clause (Art. I, §8, cl. 10).
Founding-era note: De Longchamps (1784) — a pre-Constitution Pennsylvania prosecution for assaulting a French diplomat — held that the law of nations was part of state law, an early illustration of received international-law principles in American courts.
A dictionary entry is reference: it describes how a term is used. It is not itself binding law. Why that matters →
Act on this
Somewhere to act on what you just read — start with our own tools:
Find a lawyer or legal aid → · File a complaint / get help → · Appeals, writs & exhausting remedies → · Search the caselaw & statutes → · Legal doctrines →
Legal information, not legal advice.