The Ad Hoc Diplomat: A Study in Municipal and International Law

The special diplomatic agent has played in the history of American foreign policy an important and, it is safe to say, unique role. The names of Colonel House and Harry Hopkins come, of course, right away to mind. But there have been others: John Quincy Adams, Ber­ nard M. Baruch, Henry Clay, Albert Gallatin, James Monroe, John Randolph, Daniel Webster, Wendell Wilkie, for instance. At the beginning of American history, the use of the special agent was primarily due to the scarcity of available