denote: Would the formation of an international Prize Court of Appeal
infringe the sovereignty of the several states?]

55. It is next alleged that there is a violation of sovereignty in the
fact that the proposed Prize Court is a court of appeal which is to be
competent to reverse the decisions of national prize courts. There is
nothing in this objection also, for it rests on a _petitio principii_.
If we but get rid of the preconception that a sovereign state can only
admit an interpretation of law to be authoritative for itself when
pronounced by its own courts, no reason is visible why an award of an
international court which upsets an award of a national court should be
considered an infringement of state sovereignty. He who alleges it to be
an infringement has really in view, however unconsciously, the power of
execution which is inherent in the decrees of a national court, and he
is unable to conceive a judicial decree without power of execution.
Judicial declarations of law have, however, as little as the essence of
law itself to do with power of execution; otherwise--as indeed happens
in the case of many persons--the law of nations must be denied any legal
character. Now, just as that system of law is more complete behind which
there stands a central authority enforcing it by compulsion, so also
that judicial activity is more complete with which physical power of
execution is conjoined. But alike in the one and in the other case,
physical power is not an essential element in the conception. Just as
there is law which in point of fact is not enforceable by any central
authority, so there can also be jurisdictional functions without any
correlative power of execution. International administration of justice
is, in the nature of the case, dissociated from any power of this kind;
therefore, too, it does not impair the sovereignty of states.

[Sidenote: The powers of the International Prize Court do not curtail
state-sovereignty.]

56. It is imagined that a trump card is played when it is asserted that
Article 7 of the Convention, entered into at the second Peace
Conference, respecting the Prize Court, curtails state-sovereignty when
it provides that, in default of definite agreement and of generally
recognized rules of the law of nations, the Prize Court is to give its
decisions in accordance with the principles of justice and equity, and
that therefore (so the assertion continues) on certain points the Prize
Co