Part 7 (1/2)

[13] I am greatly indebted to Professor A. A. Young for some of my economic information; but he is in no way responsible for any of my conclusions.

[14] Of course this is an over-statement. Germany produces about one-tenth of her consumption of copper.

[15] Or a period due to war, such as 1919-1920.

[16] See Hall, International Law (Seventh Edition), Chapter VIII, for an illuminating discussion.

[17] Such as the right of State A to cede territory to State B, notwithstanding the objection of State C to such a cession.

[18] See Moore's Digest, Vol. VI, pp. 2-367.

[19] Such as the intervention in Greece in 1827 by Great Britain, France and Russia. See Hertslet's Map of Europe by Treaty, Vol. I, p.

769.

[20] See the Message of President McKinley, April 11, 1898, Foreign Relations, 1898, p. 750 at p. 757.

[21] The Ethics of the Panama Question, Sen. Doc. 471, 63rd Congress, 2nd Session, p. 39.

[22] There is a reference to the _status quo_ in the General Report (Annex C, p. 181), which uses this language:

”There is a third cla.s.s of disputes to which the new system of pacific settlement can also not be applied. These are disputes which aim at revising treaties and international acts in force, or which seek to jeopardise the existing territorial integrity of signatory States. The proposal was made to include these exceptions in the Protocol, but the two Committees were unanimous in considering that, both from the legal and from the political point of view, the impossibility of applying compulsory arbitration to such cases was so obvious that it was quite superfluous to make them the subject of a special provision.

It was thought sufficient to mention them in this report.”

[23] For the view that this includes acts of force, even in the absence of a state of war, see _infra_, p. 55.

[24] The other exception ”when acting in agreement with the Council,”

etc., is not here material. It is discussed _infra_, p. 50.

{46}

CHAPTER VIII.

DOMESTIC QUESTIONS.

The treatment in the Protocol of so-called domestic questions aroused a great deal of discussion not only at the a.s.sembly, last September, but since the adoption there of the text.

It may be remembered that there was a similar public discussion at the time of the drafting of the Covenant; in that doc.u.ment[1] a domestic question is defined as ”a matter which by international law is solely within the domestic jurisdiction” of a State.

Among instances of domestic questions which have been mentioned from time to time, perhaps the two most commonly referred to in this country are the tariff and immigration. Of course it has been pointed out very often that even such questions as these, however inherently domestic, may become international as soon as they are made the subject of a treaty, as they so frequently are. It should be added that almost any question, no matter how ”domestic” in its nature originally, _may_ become the subject of international cognizance by virtue of a treaty.

There are many treaties of the United States which have related to such questions as the inheritance of land, the right to administer the estates of decedents, etc.; a very recent instance is a treaty between this country and Canada regarding the protection of migratory birds, a treaty which has been upheld as valid by the Supreme Court.[2]

None the less, the absolute right of a country to regulate these matters in its own discretion must be recognized as a matter of strict law. Any country, in the absence of treaty, may, at its pleasure, exclude foreigners from entering into its territory, for example. I think no one questions this.[3]

However, as a matter of fact and as a result of the development of the world's commerce, there is hardly any such question which remains exclusively domestic. For example, even in our {47} drastic Immigration Law of 1924,[4] there are various treaty rights of entry into the country for the purposes of commerce and so on which are expressly and in terms saved by the statute. Furthermore, there is, I suppose, hardly a country in the world which does not have various most-favored-nation treaties which directly affect tariffs.