so difficult to grasp. The speaker urged that the Courts of foreign countries ought to recognise a trust as constituting a definite right, and should give effect to its terms. The Divorce Committee presented, through Mr. J. Arthur Barratt, a further interesting report on Jurisdiction, including information received from Mr. Kenworthy Brown (English and Madras Bars), Prof. Duncan (Aberdeen), and Mr. G. T. Morice (Johannesberg) : Bills: Copyright. The Conference also dealt with Bills of Exchange, on which a report was presented by Mr. Justice Phillimore and Dr. E. V. Schuster. As the Hague Conference on Bills has approached in its recommendations more nearly to the English system than the Association was able to do at its meetings at Pesth, when the "Budapesth Rules" on Bills were adopted, it seemed a suitable occasion to modify those rules slightly in a corresponding sense. It had been arranged to make a special feature of Copyright Law but for some reason, possibly because of the special and technical nature of the subject, little discussion was evoked on this head. Papers, however, were read and attentively listened to which were of high merit and value. They included one by Mr. Iselin (London) on the English law, another by Dr. G. C. F. SchirrmeisterMarshal (London), on comparative points of English and German law, one by Prof. Osterreisth (Berlin) on German law, and a fourth by M. Rastorgoueff (London) on Russian law. Mr. Maillard also addressed the Conference on French law, and a committee was directed to take into consideration the points raised in the papers; among these were suggestions by Dr. Marshal to extend protection to the decipherer of manuscripts, and to exclude from all but merely municipal protection, commercial designs of no artistic merit. Private International Law: Nationality and Domicile. The very technical topic of Renvoi was dealt with in a very able contribution by Mr. J. T. B. Sewell (Paris), and in a short but masterly paper, by Dr. Pawley Bate, which the Author kindly furnished at short notice and under considerable difficulties owing to want of time. Mr. W. P. W. Phillimore (London), expounded forcibly the difficulties which differences of culture place in the way of the adoption of Uniform Rules of Private International Law, while Prof. Jitta urged the adhesion of Great Britain and the other pays du domicile to the Private-law Conventions of the Hague. Prof. Jitta examined, in a very interesting fashion, the solutions which have been propounded of the antinomy created by the competing principles-(which, it must be remembered, are not the only principles)—for the establishment of status, namely, those of Nationality and Domicile. The solution which adopts Nationality as a primary criterion, leaving it to the national law to substitute domicile if it chooses, is no solution at all, and it did not seem to commend itself to the speaker. The solution which would enable each nation to go into the Hague system carrying its own rule of domicile or nationality with it, is hardly much more of a solution: still, it would bring a real solution a step nearer. The third solution, a conciliation between the ideas of (Privatelaw) Nationality and Domicile themselves, is a heroic method, and Prof. Jitta referred to the scheme propounded by Minister Asser, in 1906, which was criticised in these Notes at the time as evincing a misconception of the British idea of domicile. Mr. Asser would substitute for the criterion of Nationality an artificial "Private-law Nationality," which would attach to a person after prolonged residence in a foreign country: and he seems to think that this would be accepted as a compromise and a concession, by the advocates of Domicile. In reality, of course, it goes much further. Ten years' residence in Paris would very rarely convert an English domicile into a French one. Winans would have been a domiciled Englishman, Cunliffe Brooks a domiciled Scotsman, beyond the possibility of dispute, at that rate. The theoretical possibility that an hour's residence in a foreign country may confer a foreign domicile is a theoretical possibility only. If the Continent is prepared to substitute a "Private-law Nationality” of ten years' residence, for political nationality, the only danger will be that, in accepting that in lieu of Domicile, British and American lawyers may go too far in their own direction, and lose the real stability which the status conferred by domicile actually possesses-a stability which Continental jurists, deceived by appearances, appear entirely unable to appreciate or to understand. Ten years' residence for business purposes would certainly not amount to domicile in the eye of an English tribunal. Road and Sea Traffic. A report of the Committee on Road Traffic contained valuable information on the state of the law in different countries, and a draft code of rules for the regulation of fast international traffic, prepared by Mr. J. R. Mahaffy. The question of Safety at Sea—an equally burning topic— was exhaustively dealt with by M. Léon de Montluc. He divided his paper into the heads of (1) Fixed Routes, (2) Immoderate Speed, (3) Sound Signals, and (4) International Collision Courts. Some exception was taken to any proposal to complicate sound signals, but the proposals for controlling speed and for the establishment of international Courts derive great importance from the case of the s.s. Titanic. Especial interest also attached to a brilliant essay by Dr. Nemere (Pesth) on the relation of Industrial Problems to International Law. Madrid Conference. Towards the close of the Paris meeting, an influential deputation from Madrid, including Señor Montero Villegas, of the Ministry of Justice, presented, with the authority of the Spanish Government and with the approval of H.M. the King, a cordial invitation to the Association to hold a Conference at the end of September, 1913, in Madrid. The proposal was received with enthusiasm. Preparations for the meeting are already in progress, and it may be hoped that many visitors from South and Central America, as well as Spaniards, will attend the Conference. These great and growing communities take the liveliest interest in International law, and on many occasions they have brilliantly vindicated its principles. The names of Tagues, D'Abrantes, Pombo, Avana, Tejedor, Aguera, Pereira, Netto and Seijas, ought to be as familiar to us in Europe as those of Drago and Barbosa. In the country of Suarez and Vitoria, International law is sure of a welcome, and we may be certain that the Madrid Conference will be conspicuous in the annals of the Association. Señor Canalejas, the Prime Minister of Spain, is an accomplished lawyer, and has accepted the Presidency of the Association in succession to Maître Clunet. Protectorates. In the last issue of the Law Magazine and Review, comment was made on the extraordinary action of the Government in inducing Parliament to affect to legislate for Protectorates, the very raison d'être of which is supposed to be that they are not British territory, and not within the jurisdiction of the British Crown. The moral which was drawn was that these communities are not really foreign, but are to all intents and purposes British territory; and that our Courts ought to treat them so, and should consider their people as what they certainly in fact are-British subjects. This conclusion is only confirmed by the consideration which is urged by a distinguished Netherlands correspondent, that the United Kingdom, by the Maritime Conventions, undertook to have the provisions of the Conventions carried out in her protectorates, and was therefore under an international obligation to have the necessary legislation passed. If she promised other countries to legislate for these protectorates, she thereby admitted that they were not real protectorates, but British territory. It may be questioned whether she did make any such promise. What she undertook was that the necessary legislation should be passed by the proper legislature-not by an incompetent one. She might have undertaken that France should pass certain legislation—but her consequent obligation would have had to be carried out diplomatically, and not by the solecism of affecting to include France in an Act of Parliament. The Conventions themselves (vide Rev. de Dr. Marit., 1910-11, p. 256) do not say a word about any obligation to legislate (except on specific details). They only affirm principles. When they speak of "legislation" in respect of certain details, they speak of "leurs legislations"; i.e., the legislations of the high contracting parties; and the legislation of the Sultan of Pérâk is not a legislation of the King of Great Britain and Ireland;-Emperor of India, etc., though he be. It is possible that the protocol, containing reserves as to colonies, expressly mentioned the British protectorates as not excepted from the general British reserve (see Mr. Franck's address, ib., p. 235). If it did, all that it amounted to-unless they are British territory, and their people British subjects—was an implied undertaking to get the appropriate legislation adopted in the protected States. It cannot be twisted into an undertaking to legislate for them ultra vires. TH. B. |