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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2017
The Arbitral Tribunal of the Permanent Court at The Hague, by its award of the 7th of last September, in the case of the North Atlantic Coast Fisheries, brought to a close a controversy which in its various phases has been an almost constant source of vexatious dispute between the United States and Great Britain for the past seventy years.
A treaty, granting exceptional rights, such as that which this Tribunal was called upon to consider, is peculiarly susceptible to different interpretations as the course of time brings new conditions not contemplated by its negotiators. The relations of the parties are changed. A liberty which at the date of the treaty was considered indispensable may become worthless, while one which was deemed insignificant may in years assume a place of vital importance to the beneficiaries under the grant. This change of conditions and of the value of rights has been especially true of the liberties acquired by the United States for its inhabitants under the first article of the Treaty of October 20, 1818.
This article also appears in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review and American Law Register for December, 1910, and is here printed with the per mission of the author and publisher. The author, Mr. Lansing, was one of the American counsel in the arbitration and is, therefore, familiar with the case in all its details and ramifications; and he has participated in more international arbitrations than any American publicist of the present generation. — J. B. S.
2 Printed in this Journal, 4:948. — J. B. S.
3 See convention of April 8, 1904, Supplement to this Journal, 1:9. — J. B. S.
4 Mount Joli does not appear on the modern maps. It is a small hill on the Labrador coast at a point almost due north from the eastern extremity of the Island of Anticosti in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
5 Printed in Supplement to this Journal, 8: 168. — J. B. S.
6 Dissenting opinion printed in this Journal, 1:988. — J. B. S.
