56. It is imagined that a trump card is played when it is asserted that Article 7 of the Convention, entered into at the second Peace Conference, respecting the Prize Court, curtails state-sovereignty when it provides that, in default of definite agreement and of generally recognized rules of the law of nations, the Prize Court is to give its decisions in accordance with the principles of justice and equity, and that therefore (so the assertion continues) on certain points the Prize Court can make international law by itself. Whilst up to the present time custom and convention have been the two sources of the law of nations, the Prize Court--so it is said--is now to be added as a third, and the law made by it is to become international law without requiring the assent of the several states. All this argument rests on a false assumption. The article in question endues the Prize Court in certain points with a law-making power which is simply a _delegated_ power. The states which are concerned with the Prize Court desire, in the interests of legal security, that the tribunal should not declare itself incompetent by reason of want of existing rules on any given matter. They accordingly delegate to this tribunal the power which lies in them collectively of making rules of international law, and they prospectively declare themselves at one with regard to the rules which the tribunal shall declare to be binding in the name of justice and equity. Now the Prize Court is not hereby made a special and independent source of international law by the side of convention, but the law which it declares is law resting on an agreement between states. Even in the inner life of states we meet with delegation of legislative power to a limited degree, and yet this does not mean that the authorities in question are raised into special and independent sources of law side by side with the government of the state. And just as in the inner life of a state a delegation of legislative power does not involve an infringement of sovereignty, so also the delegation of legislative power to the Prize Court involves no infringement of the sovereignty of the members of the international community of states. [Sidenote: Difference between international courts of arbitration and real international courts of justice.]