From nonintervention to hemispheric arbitration

The Olney interpretation claimed that the Monroe Doctrine gave the United States authority to mediate border disputes throughout the Western Hemisphere. Monroe's actual language contains no explicit grant of arbitral power. American officials instead applied the methods of constitutional interpretation to a presidential annual address that was neither a statute nor a constitutional text. The result was a much broader claim of hemispheric authority built from the supposed spirit of an uncodified policy.