Root Arbitration Treaties

Root Arbitration Treaties, a series of twenty-five bilateral pacts concluded in 1908 and 1909 during the tenure of Elihu Root as U.S. secretary of state. The pacts remained the chief bipartite nonaggression treaties to which the United States was a signatory until 1928, when Secretary of State Frank Kellogg negotiated with France the first pact of a new type. In general, the Root treaties obligated the parties to arbitrate differences of a legal nature and those relating to the interpretation of a treaty. They generally provided that controversies arbitrated under the treaty should be submitted to a tribunal of the Permanent Court of Arbitration.

Bibliography

Gould, Lewis L. The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991.

Leopold, Richard W. Elihu Root and the Conservative Tradition. Boston: Little, Brown, 1954.