2014 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



THE PRESIDENT: Is it not the essence of every international right 

 that it belongs to the State? When you say that a treaty is made 

 for the benefit of the inhabitants of the State, you mean that it con- 

 fers the right on the State and not on the inhabitants? It is a con- 

 tract, not between the inhabitants, but between the two States ? 



SENATOR ROOT: Precisely. This is a right of the United States, 

 and it is a right which must persist for ever. The grant of a right 

 for ever, independent of the promise of the grantor, made so by 

 impressing upon it the quality of perpetuity, is a conveyance and is 

 not a mere obligation. That is my proposition. 



THE PRESIDENT: So that every right conferred on a State in per- 

 petuity would be a conveyance and not a mere obligation; would 

 convey a part of the sovereignty to the grantee State ? 



SENATOR ROOT: Every right conveyed to the State in perpetuity, 

 so that it is not open to destruction, or impairment by the grantor, 

 and relating to the use of the territory of the grantor, made in per- 

 petuity, is a conveyance. 



JUDGE GRAY: It no longer rests in promise, but it is an executed 

 grant. 



SENATOR ROOT: It no longer rests in promise, but is an executed 

 grant. There is no other way to give effect to that quality that was 

 imported, or expressed, by the word " forever." Of course, Great 

 Britain stands upon the proposition that the territorial zone and 

 the bays, creeks, inlets and harbours to which this right relates is a 

 portion of her territory, over which she exercises sovereignty. That 

 is the basis of her position, and I need not stop to argue it. So that 

 the right which was conveyed to the United States is the right of one 

 independent nation to make use for ever, for its own benefit in a 

 prescribed area, of the territory of another independent nation. 

 That is just as Lord Bathurst described it. It is in the nature of an 

 international, real right; it is a jus in re aliena. We have here 

 another reason why this should not be regarded as a mere municipal 

 right, or a transaction between two juristic persons, because that 

 has none of the elements of indestructibility. One of the essential 

 qualities of this grant, and one which cannot be denied to it without 

 violence to the terms of the grant, is that it is removed from the 

 exercise of the powers of sovereignty of Great Britain, put beyond 

 the exercise of that power, and is vested alone in the sovereign to 

 which the grant was made. The sovereignty to which the grant was 

 made, exercising its sovereign right, its sovereign control over its 

 own right, not going beyond it, not arrogating to itself the right to 

 intefere with British jurisdiction, or with the British exercise of a 

 common right, but arrogating to itself the right to control its own 

 inhabitants, to condition the right to them, is exercising that which is 

 the right of the sovereign to which it is granted, and not the right 



