1. Eckstein comments that “…if internal war was commonplace in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it is practically the essence of contemporary political life.” He reports that according to a search of The New York Times there are well over 1,000 unequivocal examples of civil wars, riots, turmoils, organized terrorism, mutinies, and coups d’état since World War II. Internal War 3 (1964).
2. While the civil law system is a frame of reference for international law the concept of desuetude is apparently unfamiliar to the latter.
3. This statement is particularly true of the common law countries. For instance American courts observe the rule that only the legislature can abrogate a statute. District of Columbia v. Thomson, 346 U.S. 100, 113 (1953). Many obsolescent statutes remain on the statute books in the United States. For a consideration of some of these unused laws which average citizens violate every day see Hussey, “Twenty-Four Hours of a lawbreaker,” 160 Harper’s Magazine 436 (1930). Cf. also Baker, “Legislative Crimes,” Minn. Law Review, xxiii,135(1939).
4. Arnold D. McNair, “The Law Relating to the Civil War in Spain” 53, Law Quarterly Review 484 (1937).
5. See Chapter III above.