national court so long as no state is compelled to submit
itself to such a tribunal against its will. It would be possible to
constitute an international court without basing it on the
representation of definite states, and that is very likely to come to
pass in the future, when fuller confidence in the international
judicature is felt. In the proposed composition of the Prize Court
expression is given, undoubtedly, to the actually existing _political
inequality_ of states, a matter which, however, has not the least
connexion with their _legal equality_. This political inequality will
never disappear from the world, and if in course of time the creation of
an international judicature is really intended, the realization of this
idea is only possible subject to the existence of political inequality.
There is little doubt that when we come to the constituting of the Prize
Court certain smaller states will abstain because no permanent
representation therein is allotted to them. But it may confidently be
expected that the recalcitrant states will give in their adherence in
the future, when they begin to see what beneficent results the
institution has produced.

[Sidenote: Does the International Prize Court restrict the sovereignty
of the several states?]

54. The International Prize Court violates the sovereignty of states
just as little as it violates the principle of equality. No state
submitting itself to an international tribunal submits itself thereby
to the power of any other earthly sovereign so long as no other power is
entrusted with the execution of the awards of the international
tribunal, that is to say, so long as submission to any such award rests
always and entirely on the voluntary submission of the state concerned.
If this be not correct, then there would also be an invasion of
sovereignty whenever--as indeed happens everywhere more or less--a state
submits itself to the decrees of its own courts, and allows its subjects
an appeal to its courts against the measures of the government. In the
latter, as in the former case, what we have is merely the demission to
the determination of the court of the question whether certain acts and
claims are consistent with law. He who at the present day conceives
sovereignty as an unlimited arbitrariness of conduct is guilty of an
anachronism which is everywhere contradicted by the mere fact that there
are such things as international law and constitutional law.

[Si