[Music] [Music] this case was decided in the permanent Court of international justice in The Hague and Netherlands in 1927 it followed a collision between a French mail steamer the lightest and a Turkish steamer the buzz got in the middle of the night in the Mediterranean Sea there seems little doubt that the French ship was in the wrong the Turkish ship with cut into seven Turkish people died and ten were rescued from the water by the French vessel which then continued on its journey ultimately docking in Constantinople which is now known as Istanbul the capital of Turkey Turkish authorities investigated and arrested the French lieutenant of the watch and Monsieur demo France claimed that Turkey had no jurisdiction to do so because the collision had happened on the high seas and that Monsieur d'amour was on a French ship and therefore within French territory at the time of the collision Turkey's position was that it's laws allowed foreigners to be tried for crimes against Turks provided they were arrested in Turkey resolving this dispute required the court to make some really fundamental judgments about how international law worked essentially what the court said was that each nation is a free agent and each nation is therefore entitled to make any laws that it likes provided those laws don't conflict with international laws which are binding on that nation specifically the court said international law governs relations between independent states the rules of law binding upon States therefore emanate from their own free will as expressed in conventions or by usages generally accepted as expressing principles of law restrictions upon the independence of States cannot therefore be presumed all that is required of a state is that it should not overstep the limits which international law places upon its jurisdiction within these limits its title to exercise jurisdiction rests in its sovereignty the principle that each nation may make whatever laws that wishes provided those law states specifically contradict a binding international law is known as the Lotus it enshrines the fact that national sovereignty outranks international law international law is not imposed on nations by some higher authority it merely represents the agreements of individual nations and the community of nations as a whole about what restrictions they will accept in order to obtain the benefits of a stable and world regulated international order [Music] you