Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 19.pdf/696

 AN INTERNATIONAL PRIZE COURT at which their appointments are notified to the Administrative Council at The Hague. In case this date is the same for several judges, seniority of age shall determine precedence. The titulary judges shall take precedence over the substitutes. (Arts. 10-14.) The court shall consist of fifteen judges of whom nine shall constitute a quorum. If a judge is absent, he shall be replaced by his substitute. Art. 15 provides that the fol lowing eight Great Powers shall always be entitled to a seat in the Tribunal: Germany, the United States, Austria-Hungary, France, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, and Russia. "The judges and substitutes shall be ap pointed by the other Powers in rotation in accordance with the list1 annexed to the present Convention. Their functions may be exercised by the same person. The same judge may be appointed by several of the said Powers." "If a belligerent Power, according to the system of rotation, has no judge sitting in the court, it may require that the judge which it has appointed shall participate in the trial of all cases arising out of the war. In this case it shall be decided by lot which of the judges whose turn it is to sit shall withdraw. But the judge appointed by the other belligerent shall not be excluded." (Art. 16.) No one can sit as judge who has in any way taken part in the decision of the case or who has been counsel or advocate for one of the parties in the national courts; and no judge may act as agent or advocate before the International Court during his term of office. (Art. 17.) Art. 18 embodies in modified form certain features of the original German project referred to in the first part of this article. 1 This list has unfortunately not as yet been published in accessible form. The principle of rotation will be applied to the smaller states, e.. the judge of one state will, at the end of a specified time, be succeeded by a judge representing another state.

657

"The belligerent captor has the right of appointing a naval officer of high rank who shall sit in the character of an assessor with advisory functions. The same right belongs to the neutral Power, which is a party to the litigation or to the Power whose nationals are parties to the dispute. If, in accordance with this latter provision, there are several interested Powers, they should agree, if necessary by lot, upon the officer to be appointed. "Every three years the court shall elect its president and vice-president by an absolute majority of votes. After the second ballot the election shall be by relative majority. In case of an equal division of votes, the selection shall be made by lot." (Art. 19.) Art. 20 provides for the payment of the judges. They shall receive though the International Bureau at the Hague one hundred florins per diem during the exercise of their functions, together with an in demnity for their travelling expenses. As members of the court they are not to receive any remuneration from their own govern ment or from any other Power. They shall sit at The Hague and can only sit elsewhere, unless forced to do so, with the assent of the belligerent parties. (Art. 21.) Arts. 22 and 23 relate to the duties of the Administrative Council and International Bureau at The Hague, the latter of which is to keep the archives and serve as a recordoffice. The court shall decide which lan guage or languages may be used; but "in all cases, the official language of the national tribunals which have taken cognizance of the case, may be used before the court. " (Art. 24-) Titre III deals in twenty-two articles with the procedure of the court. Most of these are comparatively unimportant except to the interested parties and may be omitted here. The most interesting and important is perhaps Art. 43, which prescribes that the deliberations of the court shall be secret, although "the discussions are public unless a litigant Power asks for secrecy." (Art. 39.)