THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1930. AN IMPERIAL TRIBUNAL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20713, 5 November 1930, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1930. AN IMPERIAL TRIBUNAL.

At first sight, the suggestion of a special tribunal for the judicial settlement of disputes between parts of the Empire, as such, may seem to be without necessity, and the proposal of Lord Sankey's committee to be no better than a contriving of useless machinery. The Dominions have not been prone to quarrel with the Homeland—they outgrew that stage when they left their colonising days behind—and the Irish Free State, which may be cited as an exception proving the rule, has adopted convenient ways of getting breathing spaces between rounds. Among themselves, the Dominions have managed to keep the peace without much effort. To set up any elaborate court for adjudicating on disputes among the units of the British commonwealth would seem, therefore, to add gratuitously to the legal paraphernalia of the nation. Indeed, it might be urged that to do this is to increase the likelihood of quarrel, since "the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done." However, it should be remembered that what is now proposed has grown out of the recognition of equality of status given by the 1926 Imperial Conference, It could be taken for granted, before that recognition, that the "eminent domain" of the Homeland provided a court of appeal for any bickerings within the family, and the loose practice of calling the Parliament of the Homeland "the Imperial Parliament" encouraged this notion. With the pronouncement of 1926 that assumption has become untenable, even foolish. Since the whole group of Imperial units, including the Homeland, is composed of "autonomous communities . . . equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs," there is no authority, not even the House of Lords acting in a judicial capacity, competent to adjudicate on differences between Governments.

It may be objected that there exists the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and there can be no doubt that it is an Imperial tribunal in one sense of that description. It is one of the persistent visible links of Empire. To it every citizen of the world-wide British realm has a right to carry his cause- But for the purposes of this committee it would be straining language and fact to treat; Governments as individual citizens, and so to give them access to this particular tribunal. On the other hand, there is no possibility of bringing disputes between the units of the Empire within the jurisdiction of any established international court. It would be straining language and fact just as much to regard any one of the Dominions, or even the Homeland, as a separate nation in the full sense of that term. Professor Morgan of London University has exposed the fallacy of either regarding the Dominions as possessed of international status conferred by some authority external to Great Britain or holding them to be separate kingdoms happening to be linked by having the same Sovereign. "The King," as he says, "is not the King of Canada, but the King in Canada." Whatever anomaly may be involved in the separate votes exercised by the units of the Empire in the Assembly of the League of Nations, none of the parts of the Empire is really an individual nation. The anomaly is accepted with open eyes at Geneva because of the unique composition of the British Empire: it is not regarded as anything else than an anomaly. Besides, the possibility of any jurisdiction by an international tribunal in a dispute arising within the Empire has been explicitly averted by clear declaration at Geneva to the contrary. What is now proposed, needless as experience may make it seem, is something to provide for the situation recognised rather than created by the pronouncement of the 1926 conference, a tribunal available to Governments within the Empire in the event of their coming to serious difference capable of settlement by legal means. The project is elastic. There will be no permanent court: it will be set up "ad hoc" to deal with disputes as they may arise. Nor will there be any compulsion to submit causes to its adjudication : both parties must voluntarily agre* to the submission before the tribunal can be called into being for the setlling of any particular disputeAs to the nature of the disputes to be so settled, even this has been left quite open to the disputants. A further point, indicative of the occasional nature of the proposed court, is that it may sit anywhere in the Empire according to agreement mutually reached by the Governments concerned. What is in view, therefore, is something very different from both tin Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and the International Court at the Hague. It is no more and no less than a safeguard against the development of unrestricted and prolonged quarrels within the membership of the British family of self-governing peoples. On experience of its working, as it may be called into operation from time to time, it will function, and that is all that is really provided. It represents no remarkable departure. Indeed, there is a happy possibility that it may prove to be a resource never needed, whatever may be the theoretical advantage of having it available in case of necessity.