The Charles H. Stockton Chair of International Law at the United States Naval War College has its origins in the Naval War College's oldest civilian academic post. The first civilian academic at the College, James R. Soley was appointed in 1885 to lecture on the subject of International Law. Dr. Freeman Snow of Harvard University gave lectures on the subject in 1894, but his death in the midst of the academic program led the College to appoint Commander Charles Stockton to complete his lectures and to publish them for the use of the Navy. Stockton prepared a new edition in 1898, teaching classes in the subject. In 1901, Professoe John Bassett Moore lectured on International Law and recommended that the College appoint Harvard University Law professor George Grafton Wilson as the visiting professor. Wilson lectured annually from 1901 to 1937. From 1946 to 1953, Professor Manley Hudson of Harvard regularly came from Cambridge to give the College's International Law lectures.
On 11 July 1951, the Chief of Naval Personnel approved the formal establishment of a full-time professorship of International Law to replace the part-time position that had existed previously. In 1967, the Secretary of the Navy officially designated the academic post as the Charles H. Stockton Chair of International Law in honor of Rear Admiral Charles Stockton, a former faculty member and President of the Naval War College, who had been the U.S. Navy's first uniformed expert in International Law.