1712 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



It is the contention frequently put forward by the United States, 

 that unless their claim for sovereign right of regulation be allowed, 

 the contract leaves them no remedy. 



Mr. Turner put it in very clear words when he said, if we are to 

 have the right to fish, but Great Britain is to be left with the right 

 of regulation, our liberty is then a very barren privilege or right. 



Well, you Sir, Mr. President, put to him various questions by way 

 of elucidating that part of his argument, but I think it was left very 

 much where I have just ventured to state it. He said we must have 

 a remedy, or our right is worthless. 



There, I think, was a confusion of two quite distinct subjects of 

 argument, so far as this Tribunal is concerned. 



The primary and essential, and indeed the whole business of this 

 Tribunal, is to interpret, or as we say to construe the document, the 

 contract Whether or not the parties have provided themselves, or 

 are provided by the law, with a remedy for the breach of that con- 

 tract on either side is a different matter, a matter which I think does 

 not come strictly within the scope of this Tribunal at all. It is for 

 this Court, the greatest of all Courts (certainly for the present), as 

 for any other Court, to declare its opinion of the true intent of the 

 document, what the parties I will not always say meant but what 

 they must have been taken to have meant, by the document in which 

 they express their intention. 



But, when that duty is performed on the part of a Court, then the 

 question as to whether or not there is an executive remedy, as to 

 whether the obligation thus defined and ascertained can be performed 

 or not, is a different matter. 



Of course no such difficulty arises in municipal law, but such a 

 difficulty is always known to exist in what is called, and might justly 

 and properly be called, international law. 



I have heard precisians in language say there is no such thing as 

 international law, because there is no sanction, to use the language of 

 the moralists, there is no superior force by which the declarations and 

 decisions of law can be enforced upon the parties. 



That, I think, is a very mistaken view of international law, and 

 does but little justice to what is a real, though vague sanction, stand- 

 ing behind all the declarations of the law of nations. There is a 

 sanction, if you like, not always operative, not always present or felt 

 by the parties, but there is a sanction in the great force of public 

 opinion, that is a power to which nations have to yield in spite of 

 sovereignty and their independence; there is both within their own 

 borders, and within the limits of the boundaries of the great human 

 community, this persuasive universal but unfailing force which 

 operates sooner or later, bringing with it its own reward and pun- 



