United States Participation in Drafting Paris Convention 1919

T HE extent of United States participation in the preparation and drafting of the Convention relating to the Regulation of Aerial Navigation (Paris 1919) has been little appreciated.The fact that the United States signed this convention but did not ratify it is well known.But the more important fact that its delegates took a leading part in urging the adoption of certain of the basic principles of the convention, and that its representative on the Legal Subcommission cast a crucial deciding vote which may have changed much of the subsequent development of the international law of commercial entry of the aircraft of one contracting State into the territory of another, is practically unknown.