By 4 and 5 Geo. V. c. 13 the provisions of the act of 1864 specified in the schedule to the act of 1914 relating to practice and procedure were repealed and rules in substitution in pursuance of 57 and 58 Vict. c. 39, s. 3, were made by Order in Council, with the proviso that nothing shall extend s. 16 of the act of 1864 to ships of war taken a prize, see Rules of Court in Prize Proceedings, Order in Council, Aug. 5,1914, which were subsequently amended by Order in Council issued as "Statutory Rules" on Nov. 28, 1914; Feb. 3, 1915; April 29, 1915; and Dec. 21, 1917.
The "course of the admiralty" was understood to mean the mari time law and customs of the sea, as recognized and applied by the maritime nations of Europe. "The law of nations" was wider. It included also treaties, the decisions of courts and the writings of jurists. Later it included international conventions, such as the Geneva Convention of 1906, Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, the Declarations of Paris 1856, and London 1909. Consequently British prize courts are bound to administer international law, but since they are municipal courts drawing their authority from the king in the parliament, they are bound by an act of parliament, even if it be contrary to the law of nations. They are not, how ever, bound by Orders in Council although they will act on them when they amount to a mitigation of the rights of the Crown in favour of the enemy or neutral (see the Zamora, 1916, 2 A.C. 77; 2 B. & C.P.C. 1). Precedents are followed, but not blindly. As Sir Samuel Evans said in the Odessa (194) 1 B. & C.P.C. at p. they "should be treated as guides to lead and not as shackles to bind." By the Prize Court Rules 1914, captors may support their case by any evidence derived from extrinsic sources. In many cases of continuous voyage, for instance, it was only possible to detect and prove contraband trading by the interception of letters, cables and wireless messages.
See also Prize Cases Decided in the United States Supreme Court, 1789-1918 (1923). (X.) The United States.—The Constitution of the United States vests the judicial power of the United States "in one Supreme Court and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish." The judicial power shall extend
"to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction" and the Supreme Court has appellate jurisdiction in prize cases. (Consti tution, Art. III.) The Federal district courts have original juris diction "of all prize brought into the United States; and of all proceedings for the condemnation of property taken as prize." (42 U.S. Stat. Art. I., section 8, of the Constitution provides that Congress shall have power "to declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal and make rules concerning captures on land and water." Under this provision Congress has from time to time acted. On Jan. 15, 1780, even before the Constitution was adopted, it was resolved that a court of appeal be established which should hear appeals "in case of capture." The U.S. courts in the early days followed the recognized precedents as Mr. Justice Wilson said in 1796: "When the United States declared their independence, they were bound to receive the law of nations, in its modern state of purity and refinement." (Ware v. Hylton, 3 Dallas, 199.) This applied to maritime capture as was said by Chief Justice Marshall in 1815: "The law of nations is the great source from which we derive those rules, respecting belligerent and neutral rights, which are recognized by all civilized and commercial states throughout Europe and America." (Thirty Hogsheads of Sugar v. Boyle, 1815, 9 Cranch, 191.) An early decision, in 1795, had said : "A prize court is, in effect, a court of all the nations in the world, because all persons, in every part of the world, are con cluded by its sentences, in cases clearly coming within its juris- , diction." (Penhallow v. Doane, 3 Dallas, 54.) Mr. Justice Story in 1815 stated in the opinion of the Supreme Court : "The Court of Prize is emphatically a court of the law of nations, and it takes neither its character nor its rules from the mere municipal regulations of any country." (The Adeline, 9 Cranch, 244.) The aims of prize courts from the American point of view were stated from time to time by the Supreme Court in later decisions, as in 1882, when Justice Gray said: "Prize Courts are not instituted to determine civil and private rights, but for the purpose of trying judicially the lawfulness of captures at sea, according to the principles of public international law, with the double object of preventing and redressing wrongful captures, and of justifying the rightful acts of the captors, in the eyes of other nations." (Cushing v. Laird, 107 U.S. 69.) The United States has also negotiated many treaties with the States of Central and South America which contain articles similar to the following of 1887 with Peru:— Article XXV.