WRIGHT— POWER TO AlEET RESPONSIBILITIES. 303 



142. Practice in Submission of Disputes to Arbitration. 



Although under the League of Nations Covenant, apparently any 

 question involving either of these obligations should be considered 

 justiciable, it appears that in the past states have been very reluctant 

 to consider disputes relating to the performance of political acts, 

 even when required by treaty, as fully justiciable. They have been 

 unwilling to be controlled by any authority other than their own 

 consciences in questions involving sovereignty, such as the method 

 by which guarantees are to be fulfilled or laws enforced within 

 their own territory. Thus Lord Derby said of the Luxemburg neu- 

 tralization guarantee : " We are bound in honor — you cannot put 

 a legal construction upon it — to see in concert with others that these 

 arrangements are maintained." ^^ And President Wilson said of 

 the guarantee in Article X of the League of Nations Covenant : ^® 



" It is a moral, not a legal, obligation, and leaves our Congress absolutely 

 free to put its own interpretation upon it in all cases that call for action. It 

 is binding in conscience only, not in law." 



The North Atlantic Fisheries arbitration court seemed to sanc- 

 tion the same view when it refused to hold that Great Britain was 

 bound to gain American assent to fishery regulations within those 

 territorial waters in which the United States claimed a treaty 

 servitude : ^^ 



" The right to regulate the liberties conferred by the treaty of 1817 is an 

 attribute of sovereignty, and as such must be held to reside in the territorial 

 sovereign unless the contrary be provided." 



In practice claims for reparation have been the type most 

 frequently submitted to arbitration, though cases involving the 

 limits of jurisdiction such as boundaries, public vessels, etc., have 

 occasionally been so settled. 



where each man is judge of the limits of his own competence. Moral rights 

 and duties may exist in a society not organized at all. (Supra, sec. 140.) 

 The family of nations has passed from the last to the second stage and is 

 slowly advancing to the first. (Infra, sec. 142; Wright, Col. Law Rev., 20: 

 147-148.) 



3" Hansard, Debates, 3d Ser., 187: 1922; Hall, op. cit., p. 355. 



38 Statement to Senate For. Rel. Committee, Aug. 19, 1919, 66th Cong., 

 1st sess.. Sen. Doc. 106, p. 502. 



30 Wilson, The Hague Arbitration Cases, Boston, 1915, p. 154. 



