53. It is alleged that the principle of equality is violated in that the Prize Court is contemplated as consisting of fifteen members, so that, while the eight Great Powers are always represented by a member, the thirty-seven smaller states are only represented by seven members who take their seats in the court in rotation according to a definite plan. Now it is not clear how the principle of equality can be deemed violated thereby. This principle has really nothing to do with the constitution of an international court so long as no state is compelled to submit itself to such a tribunal against its will. It would be possible to constitute an international court without basing it on the representation of definite states, and that is very likely to come to pass in the future, when fuller confidence in the international judicature is felt. In the proposed composition of the Prize Court expression is given, undoubtedly, to the actually existing _political inequality_ of states, a matter which, however, has not the least connexion with their _legal equality_. This political inequality will never disappear from the world, and if in course of time the creation of an international judicature is really intended, the realization of this idea is only possible subject to the existence of political inequality. There is little doubt that when we come to the constituting of the Prize Court certain smaller states will abstain because no permanent representation therein is allotted to them. But it may confidently be expected that the recalcitrant states will give in their adherence in the future, when they begin to see what beneficent results the institution has produced. [Sidenote: Does the International Prize Court restrict the sovereignty of the several states?] 54. The International Prize Court violates the sovereignty of states just as little as it violates the principle of equality. No state submitting itself to an international tribunal submits itself thereby to the power of any other earthly sovereign so long as no other power is entrusted with the execution of the awards of the international tribunal, that is to say, so long as submission to any such award rests always and entirely on the voluntary submission of the state concerned. If this be not correct, then there would also be an invasion of sovereignty whenever--as indeed happens everywhere more or less--a state submits itself to the decrees of its own courts, and allows its subjects an appeal to its courts against the measures of the government. In the latter, as in the former case, what we have is merely the demission to the determination of the court of the question whether certain acts and claims are consistent with law. He who at the present day conceives sovereignty as an unlimited arbitrariness of conduct is guilty of an anachronism which is everywhere contradicted by the mere fact that there are such things as international law and constitutional law.