Calvo Doctrine

INTERNATIONAL LAW

Calvo Doctrine, a body of international rules regulating

the jurisdiction of governments over aliens and the scope of
their protection by their home states, as well as the use of force
in collecting indemnities.

The doctrine was advanced by the Argentine diplomat and legal

scholar Carlos Calvo, in his International Law of Europe and
America in Theory and Practice (1868). It affirmed that rules
governing the jurisdiction of a country over aliens and the
collection of indemnities should apply equally to all nations,
regardless of size. It further stated that foreigners who held
property in Latin American states and who had claims against
the governments of such states should apply to the courts
within such nations for redress instead of seeking diplomatic
intervention. Moreover, according to the doctrine, nations were
not entitled to use armed force to collect debts owed them by
other nations. A Calvo clause in a contract between the
government of a Latin American state and an alien stipulates
that the latter agrees unconditionally to the adjudication within
the state concerned of any dispute between the contracting
parties.

The Calvo Doctrine was essentially restated by the Drago

Doctrine, articulated by the Argentine foreign minister Luis
María Drago in 1902. Venezuela then was indebted to Great
Britain, Germany, and Italy, which threatened armed
intervention to collect. Drago advised the United States
government that “The public debt cannot occasion armed
intervention nor even the actual occupation of the territory of
American nations.” This statement against European
intervention in the Americas squared with U.S. policy, as set
forth in the Monroe Doctrine (1823) and the Roosevelt Corollary
(1904); the U.S. government assented to the modified Drago
version at the second Hague Peace Conference (1907) in the
form adopted as the Porter Convention on the Limitation of the
Employment of Force for the Recovery of Contract Debts.
Although the United States opposed European intervention in
the Americas, it reserved for itself the right, frequently used, to
intervene with armed force in any Latin-American state where
conditions seemed to menace U.S. interests.