Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/312

276 276 HARVARD LAW REVIEW by Russia in the German court at Kiao-chau, and judgment was rendered against Russia on a coimterclaim asserted by the de- fendant. The case came before the Prussian court on the question whether execution against Russian property in Berlin could issue on this judgment. The court assumed that the Russian govern- ment had submitted itself to the jurisdiction of the Kiao-chau court for the purpose of deciding the counterclaim. It held, how- ever, that this submission must be regarded as "limited to the judicial determination of the question of law at issue between the parties" and that it did not extend "to the judicial execution of any resulting judgment." The court said the fact was to be pre- mised that a renunciation of sovereignty would take place only in a definite relation, and it pointed out that even in arbitration treaties nations make no provision for submission to the execution of the arbitral award. The decision can hardly be questioned. Because a foreign sovereign consents to an adverse judgment, he does not thereby consent to indiscriminate seizure of his property to satisfy that judgment. In fact, Laurent,^^ who makes a distinction between a state's governmental acts {actes de souverainete) and its private acts (actes cf inter et-prive) and who urges that foreign states should be amenable to suit in the latter class of cases, declares that even after adverse judgment the state's property must be free from seizure. It would seem to follow from the views of this writer, although he does not discuss the point, that he would favor a wider immunity for suits against the property of foreign sovereigns than for suits directly against such sovereigns. In spite of some early criticism the law to-day gives immunity to the property of a sovereign which is used for public purposes; and the wide functions of government are recognized in inter- preting what is a public purpose. The distinction which in theory should be made between cases involving the domestic and cases involving a foreign sovereign has been so consistently glossed over that it can scarcely be said to exist as a living principle of law. The English courts have protected every interest which a sov- ereign may have in property. The American courts have not as yet given immunity to private property employed by a sovereign.
 * See his Droit Civil International, Paris (1880), vol. 3, 75-89.