Wimbledon case

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The Wimbledon case (English. Case of the SS "Wimbledon" ) is a legal dispute decided in August 1923 by the Permanent International Court of Justice (StIGH) between England, France, Italy, Japan and Poland on the one hand and the German Reich on the other. It was decided that the German Reich should not have prevented the SS Wimbledon ship loaded with war material for Poland from passing through the Kiel Canal in March 1921.

facts

On March 21, 1921, the SS Wimbledon reached the entrance to the Kiel Canal . The English ship had been chartered by a French company; this ship was intended to bring war material from Salonika to the Polish naval depot in Danzig for the Polish government . Poland was at war with the Soviet Union . The German Reich, which had declared itself neutral, refused the SS Wimbledon passage.

On March 23, 1921, the French ambassador in Berlin asked the German government to lift the drive-through ban. However, the German government refused. The German Reich took the position that the neutrality obligation based on international law took precedence over the contractual provisions of the Versailles Treaty. As a result, the parties argued about whether Article 380 of the Versailles Peace Treaty precludes the denial of passage.

Wording of Article 380:

The Kiel Canal [Kiel Canal] and its entrances are permanently free and open to war and merchant ships of all nations living in peace with Germany on the basis of complete equality.

Decision of the StIGH

Since both parties could not come to an agreement, the legal dispute ended up before the StIGH. On August 17, 1923, the court ruled against Germany on the grounds that the state sovereignty of the German Reich does not conflict with the provision in Article 380 of the Versailles Treaty, but rather the exercise of sovereignty rights is restricted by an international treaty . This restriction did not violate sovereignty, since the conclusion of the contract itself was an act of sovereignty [and the restriction was a self-restriction].

The Court declines to see in the conclusion of any treaty by which a state undertakes to perform or refrain from performing a particular act an abandonment of its sovereignty. No doubt any convention creating an obligation of this kind places a restriction upon the exercise of the sovereign rights of the state, in the sense that it requires them to be exercised in a certain way. But the right of entering into international engagements is an attribute of State sovereignty.

The German Reich should not have denied passage.

Web links

further reading

  • E. Rocholl: The Kiel Canal under the Versailles Treaty. The Wimbledon event . In: Deutsche Juristen Zeitung, Vol. 29 (1924), p. 355.
  • E. Wolgast: The Wimbledon trial before the League of Nations Court . Basel: Publishing House for Law and History, 1926.