ARGUMENT OF ELIHU ROOT. 2125 



rejects the almost universal testimony of the approved witnesses as 

 to the existence of rules of international law. It would be a mis- 

 fortune if the judgment here should disappoint the just expectations 

 with which the civilized world looks to the decision of a great inter- 

 national tribunal engaged in that administration of justice which 

 should always be not merely a disposal of the rights of the litigants, 

 but a constructive force in the building up of a system to assure 

 justice in future times and in future disputes between nations. 



We cannot shuffle off the relation of the rule to which I have re- 

 ferred to the construction of this instrument by treating the great 

 founders and expounders of international law as freaks in a museum 

 of antiquities. 



I have said that the essential quality of this special class of rights, 

 granted by convention between two independent nations, and having 

 a perpetual quality in the right granted, is the restriction of sover- 

 eignty. Let me give a few of the brief expressions of that idea by 

 the witnesses whom we have called. 



Bluntschli says: 



" The name of international servitudes is given to every conven- 

 tional and perpetual restriction affecting the territorial sovereignty 

 of a State in favor of another State." 



1285 Bonfils says: 



"The servitudes called conventional alone constitute veri- 

 table restrictions upon the free exercise of internal sovereignty for 

 the benefit of other States." 



I beg the Tribunal, while I read these expressions, to receive them 

 free from any prejudice arising from the fact that these gentlemen 

 used the term "international servitudes." They are merely using 

 a name which they have chosen to apply to a special class of rights, 

 and under which some of them group other characteristics and some 

 do not. This is the one essential characteristic, and the all-sufficient 

 characteristic : 



Calvo says: 



" International servitudes are every restriction confining the terri- 

 torial sovereignty of a State in favor of another State." 



Chretien : 



"A State may have renounced for the benefit of one or several 



others the exercise of a right conferred by its sovereignty If 



this is permanent an international servitude results." 



Clauss : 



"State servitudes are permanent limitations of territorial sover- 

 eignty of one State in regard to another State, created by special 

 agreements or by possession from time immemorial." 



