Suchergebnisse

Governmental liability for tort seems to be a field in which a comparative study is particularly appropriate. The subject is a segment of legislative reforms in which the influence of foreign systems has been marked. Highly developed foreign systems, especially the French, played their role in the demands among scholars for legislative reforms. The late Professor Edwin Borchard of Yale Law School, for many years one of the chief sponsors of federal legislation, made detailed studies of the foreign laws of governmental responsibility for tort.'

The problem of jurisdiction is of even greater importance in international law than it is in the domain of municipal law. This may easily be understood because, up to the present, no international tribunal has been furnished with obligatory jurisdiction binding upon all States. In consequence, the judicial settlement of many international disputes depends upon the preliminary question whether any tribunal has jurisdiction over the case. Although since the foundation of the Permanent Court of International Justice at The Hague a tribunal invested with a very comprehensive jurisdiction exists, it is, nevertheless, significant that in many cases before the Permanent Court a plea to the jurisdiction has been raised with the obvious intention of preventing a legal decision on the merits.