sponsions

SPONSIONS, international law. Agreements or engagements made by certain 
public officers, as generals or admirals, in time of war, either without 
authority, or by exceeding the limits of authority under which they purport 
to be made. 
     2. Before these conventions can have any binding authority on the 
state, they must be confirmed by express or tacit ratification. The former 
is given in positive terms and in the usual forms; the latter is justly 
implied from the fact of acting under the agreement as if bound by it, and 
from any other circumstance from which an assent may be fairly presumed. 
Wheat. Intern. Law, pt. 3, c. 2, Sec. 3; Grotius, de Jur. Bel. ac Pac. 1. 2, 
c. 15, Sec. 16; Id. 1. 3, c. 22, 1-3: Vattel, Law of Nat, B. 2, c. 14, 209-
212; Wolff, 1156.