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the offence.
He was indicted at the Central Criminal Court for
manslaughter and the question before the court was
whether the Central Criminal Court had power to try
The question of the derivation of
jurisdiction from international law was considered
by Sir R. Phillimore in his judgment (at p.68); he
said "It being then in my opinion clear that the
jurisdiction to try this prisoner was not derived
from the common law, or the statute law, or the law
of the High Court of Admiralty, what law did render
the English court competent for this purpose? As I
understand the contention on behalf of the crown the
answer is international law. In other words, by the
consent of all civilised states, England has become
entitled to include within her realm a marine league
of sea and therefore has jurisdiction over a foreign
vessel within that limit. It is indeed a most grave
question whether if this statement of international
law were correct, nevertheless, an act of Parliament
would not be required to empower the court to exercise
jurisdiction."
In my opinion the argument that a juris-
diction whether in England or in this Colony in respect
of an extra-territorial occurrence can be derived
by a court from international law directly without
the intervention of legislation cannot be sustained.
Legislation is necessary; and the crime of piracy,
being extra-territorial, the legislation which is to
empower this court to try that offence must be legis-
lation of the imperial parliament.
To hold any
other view would lead to the conclusion that it might
be possible for this court to exercise alteratively