Matters of Domestic Jurisdiction
![handle is hein.journals/byrint6 and id is 12 raw text is: MATTERS OF DOMESTIC JURISDICTION
By PROFESSOR J. L. BRIERLY, O.B.E., M.A., B.C.L.,
Chichele Professor of International Law and Diplomacy at Oxford.
ARTICLE 15 of the Covenant of the League of Nations has
introduced into the terminology of international law a phrase which
already shows signs of becoming a new catchword, and which is
capable of proving as great a hindrance to the orderly develop-
ment of the subject as the somewhat battered idols of sovereignty,
state equality, and the like have been in the past. In fact journalists
and politicians together have already succeeded in creating an
atmosphere in which many people seem to be convinced that the
maintenance of a White Australia, or the right of America to frame
her own liquor legislation, is somehow bound up with the inviola-
bility of domestic jurisdiction ; and we are warned against any
encroachment on the province of the new fetish, about which,
however, little seems to be generally known except its extreme
sanctity.1 Unfortunately, international law, doubtless because it
attempts to regulate interests which engage the emotions and the
prejudices of masses of men, has always been peculiarly susceptible
to the tyranny of phrases; and it may therefore be worth while to
attempt, first to elucidate the meaning of this formidable new-
comer, and then to estimate the significance of its arrival for the
future of the subject.
It will be remembered that Article 15 of the Covenant lays
down the method of procedure to be applied to those disputes
likely to lead to a rupture which, not having been submitted to
arbitration or to judicial settlement, must, in accordance with
Article 12, be submitted to inquiry by the Council ; and paragraph
8, with which this article is concerned, is in the following terms:
If the dispute between the parties is claimed by one of them, and is found
by the Council to arise out of a matter which by international law is solely within
I The confusion surrounding the phrase extends even to the official statement of the
British Government's reasons for refusing to accept the recent Geneva Protocol.
Among other reasons for that course it speaks of the weakening (by the Protocol)
of those reservations in cl. ] 5 of the Covenant which were designed to prevent any
interference by the League in matters of domestic jurisdiction. This curious inversion
of the real effect of the Protocol is repeated in The Times leading article of the same
date, March 13, 1925.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/byrint6&div=5&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Matters of Domestic Jurisdiction
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