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solidarity and zeal for international legal reform that set them apart from
their mother countries;
• Third, all the new countries of the Western Hemisphere shared a sense
of solidarity forged by and during their collective struggle for
independence, which united them as a region distinct from Europe. 19
Although Álvarez recognizes that most American republics have domestic
legal systems whose roots can be traced back to Europe, he believes that with
independence—itself a radical challenge to traditional international law—the
American republics started a revolutionary tradition of their own in domestic and
international law. For Álvarez, the wars of independence created a wide legal rift
between the Western Hemisphere and Europe: “While the countries of the New
World sought to gain their independence, [a cause] that their national sentiment led
them to consider legitimate; their metropolises condemned their struggle as a crime
deserving punishment” (1962a, 66; author's translation). Álvarez argues that in this
historical context—the sharing of some common ideas, practices, and norms with
Europe notwithstanding—the Western Hemisphere came to perceive itself as
different from Europe (71). Similarly, although Álvarez acknowledges that there are
differences in the legal and political systems within the New World, he believes that
these differences have not prevented the American republics from developing a
hemispheric-wide sense of solidarity forged by their cooperative struggle for
independence. For him and his philosophical allies, this regional sentiment, or
“Western Hemisphere Idea,” however ethereal, is an extremely powerful concept. 20
The main juridical arguments used by Álvarez and his intellectual associates
to justify the right of the American republics to develop their own regional
international law are the following:
• First, the newly independent American republics have both the right to
reject those norms and practices of the traditional Euro-centric
international legal system that constrained their freedom and the right
to establish new legal principles that would foster their full development
(Álvarez 1962a, 71). Homero Henríquez, a legal scholar from the
Dominican Republic, supports this argument by saying that the birth and
survival of the American republics gave origin to a hemispheric-wide
American International Law. In his view, “exercising the most sacred
human prerogative of independence,” the American republics had a right
both to distance themselves from some of the norms of Euro-centric
international law and to proclaim their own novel legal principles (1948,
7-8; author’s translation). This process of challenging traditional European
international law is exemplified by, among others, the Jeffersonian principle
of self-determination as well as the Calvo, Tejedor, and Drago doctrines of
non-intervention. 21 The Jeffersonian of principle of self-determination
asserts the American republics’ right to independence. The Calvo and
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