CURRENT LEGAL ARTICLES.
THE London legal journals print interest ing comments on the appointment of an International Commission of Inquiry in the North Sea matter. Says The Law Times: The International Commission of Inquiry into the North Sea incident must not be placed in the category of international courts of arbitration. The functions of the tribunal will be confined to an inquiry and a report with reference to all the circum stances relating to the disaster and the ap portionment of the responsibility for its oc currence. It will, in the words of Mr. Balfour, have "nothing to do with arbitra tion." Its functions will be confined to the elucidation of facts. The commission is, however, as powerful a factor "in the peace ful adjustment of international differences" as a tribunal of arbitration. It is not per haps generally known that Great Britain has amply availed herself of the privilege of submitting international disputes to arbitra tion. Disputes between Great Britain and the United States have been on no fewer than twelve occasions submitted to arbitra tion, and on five occasions disputes between Great Britain and Portugal have been thus settled. Germany, France, Chili, Spain, and Brazil have each twice been opposed to Great Britain in an arbitration court, while Holland, Nicaragua, Peru, Liberia, and Co lumbia have submitted disputes with Great Britain to arbitration. The Law Journal comments as follows: The agreement to appoint an Interna tional Commission of Inquiry to report on the facts of the North Sea outrage has been bailed as the greatest triumph which the cause of arbitration has achieved. We trust that this belief will be justified by the result. This is, indeed, the first case in which two great Powers on the verge of war have agreed to refer a dispute as to facts to a tribunal constituted in accordance with the recommendations of The Hague Conven tion, in the hope that its findings will estab lish a basis for the settlement of their quar rel. Yet it will be well not to expect too much from this reference.
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IN the Yale Laiv Journal for November, Judge Simeon E. Baldwin, of the Yale Law School, gives an interesting account of "The Hague Conference of 1904 for the Advance ment of Private International Law: The final outcome of the conference of 1904 was, beside this revision [of the con vention on matters of civil procedure], the proposition of four new conventions: on succession, bankruptcies, the relations be tween husband and wife established by their marriage, and lunatics. The convention as to civil procedure, if amended as proposed, will effectually settle the mode of service of process to subject non-resident defendants to the jurisdiction of the courts; the manner of bringing suits by foreigners; the execution of foreign judgments, and the methods to be pursued under rogatory commissions to take evi dence. Among other things, it will sanction the service of citations on subjects of the power under whose authority they may be issued, made in another country through the diplomatic or consular representatives of the former. . . . The conventions on successions, marital relations and lunatics, are all bottomed on the application of the law of a party's na tionality. England and the United States have al ways stood for the law of domicil or that of the seat of a transaction, as the proper rule for regulating the rights of a person or the effects of a legal act. The person whose re lations may be in question may thus freely select the applicable law; for he may change his domicil at pleasure, and enter into con tracts or do a non-contractual act, wher ever he thinks proper. Italy has been equally persistent in main taining the right of his own state to dictate the applicable law. Her jurists have re jected the principle of freedom of personal choice for that of national subjection. . . . While Germany was a loose confedera tion, she adhered to the Anglo-American view, and for similar reasons. Her present imperial constitution and her imperial code of 1900, with its centralizing provisions, j have now made it her policy to prefer nationalitv.
