Retortion

RETORSION. An act by which a government imposes the same hard treatment on the citizens or subjects of a state that the latter has used towards the citizens or subjects of the former, for the purpose of obtaining the removal of obnoxious measures. Vat tel, liv. 2, c. IS, § 341. An act of retaliation in kind when a nation has failed in courtesy or friendship. Instances of retortion usually arise in discriminating duties or restrictions upon commercial intercourse; Snow, Int. Law 78. It is equivalent to retaliation and may be either amicable or vindictive. The former, retorsion de droit, is a remedy for a departure from any international courtesy, done in an unfriendly, but not an illegal manner. The latter, retorsio facti, implies the infliction of the same amount of evil on an aggressive state that it has inflicted on the state aggrieved; Risley, Law of War 57. This is a purely belligerent act; id. The term is more properly applied to retaliation for unfriendly and inequitable acts on the part of foreign states and should not be extended to embrace illegal acts or international delinquencies. 2 Opp. §§ 20-33.