CO129-594-7 Proposed legislation to regularise registration of births- marriages and deaths in Stanley internment camp during... 16-10-1945 - 19-12-1946 — Page 28

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this provision as follows:-

"Now that the distinction between conquest and

military occupation is formally drawn, the source

of an invader's authority cannot be looked for in

a transfer of that of the territorial sovereign.

It is a new authority based on the necessities of

war and on the duty which the invader owes to

the population of the occupied districts".

He quotes with approval a draft drawn up by the

Brussells Conference in 1874 (which was not, however,

adopted by the powers in any binding form). This

states that "the authority of legal power being

suspended and having passed de facto into the hands of

the occupant". (Page 85). Speaking of Hague

Regulation 43 quoted above, he says "The suspension,

not the transfer, of the power previously legal, must

equally be understood; what it is intended to be

ed

express as having passed to the occupant is the fact

of that having legal authority, not the pre-existing

authority with its nature and limits". In another

place, at p.111, he points out that it is desirable

for the civil officials of the legitimate government

to carry on the ordinary administration under the

invader, but that the invader has no right to force

them to do so. He states if they decline to do it,

(and his only right, it is also his duty, is to replace

them by appointees of his own so far as necessary for

maintaining order and the convenience of the daily

life of the district: other purposes, as those of

the superior judicial offices, can bide their time. Voe I Similarly, the more recent work of Oppenheim at p. 349

states that there is no doubt that an occupant may

suspend the judges as well as other officials, and a

long footnote (4) at that page discusses the form in

which judgment should be pronounced if the occupant

allows the courts to continue to function.

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