The Settlement of Inter-State Disputes

Abstract

It is the purpose of this paper to review the methods and the principles which have been involved in the quasi-international jurisdiction which has been exercised to settle the disputes which have arisen between the members of the great federations which have sprung from the British Empire of the seventeenth century. These methods have not only been widely copied in the past, especially by the various South American states and by Switzerland, but they are likely to become of compelling interest, if ever the world should apply the federal principle to the League of Nations of which we hear so much in these days.As soon as the colonies were thickly settled on the Atlantic shore of what is now the United States, it was natural for them to become involved in bitter disputes about their conflicting boundaries and trade regulations. These controversies were settled either (1) by informal agreements between the colonies, which were sometimes sanctioned later by the Privy Council, or (2) in the more serious cases by the Council itself acting under the royal prerogative. Since the disputes were almost always concerned with the interpretation of charters which came at least nominally from the King, it was evidently proper that the same King in Council should sit as the arbiter in these controversies. Sometimes the Privy Council decided these issues in London; again it sent out commissioners to bring the parties into agreement on the ground. In every case the authority of the Council was looked upon by the distant colonists with the greatest jealousy, but its legal authority in such matters was never questioned. It is safe to say that from the authority of this administrative body is derived the quasi-international authority of every federal court in the world, except the German Bundesrath whose power to settle the disputes of the members of the German Empire has a wholly distinct origin in the Diets of the Confederation and of the Holy Roman Empire.