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    West Rand Central Gold Mining Co V R

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    Mayank Sen
    1) Customary international law will be applied in municipal law if it reflects the common consent of civilized nations. 2) For a rule of customary international law to apply, it must be proven that most countries recognize and follow that rule through their actions and agreements. 3) In this case, the court found that under customary international law, the British government did not assume financial obligations of the conquered South African Republic unless it expressly agreed to, so the mining company's claim failed.

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    West Rand Central Gold Mining Co V R

    Uploaded by

    Mayank Sen
    5K views2 pages
    1) Customary international law will be applied in municipal law if it reflects the common consent of civilized nations. 2) For a rule of customary international law to apply, it must be proven that most countries recognize and follow that rule through their actions and agreements. 3) In this case, the court found that under customary international law, the British government did not assume financial obligations of the conquered South African Republic unless it expressly agreed to, so the mining company's claim failed.

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    famous public international law case

    Original Title

    West Rand Central Gold Mining Co v R

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    1) Customary international law will be applied in municipal law if it reflects the common consent of civilized nations. 2) For a rule of customary international law to apply, it must be proven that most countries recognize and follow that rule through their actions and agreements. 3) In this case, the court found that under customary international law, the British government did not assume financial obligations of the conquered South African Republic unless it expressly agreed to, so the mining company's claim failed.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    5K views2 pages

    West Rand Central Gold Mining Co V R

    Uploaded by

    Mayank Sen
    1) Customary international law will be applied in municipal law if it reflects the common consent of civilized nations. 2) For a rule of customary international law to apply, it must be proven that most countries recognize and follow that rule through their actions and agreements. 3) In this case, the court found that under customary international law, the British government did not assume financial obligations of the conquered South African Republic unless it expressly agreed to, so the mining company's claim failed.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 2

    Public international law and municipal law

    Customary international law in municipal law

    West Rand Central Gold Mining Co Ltd v. R

    [1905] 2 KB 391 (King’s Bench Division)

    In principle, customary international law will be applied in the administration of municipal


    law. However, a rule of customary international law requires “the common consent of
    civilized nations”. In this regard, “the mere opinions of jurists, however eminent or learned,
    … are not in themselves sufficient”.

    Background

    West Rand Central Gold Mining Co Ltd (“the company”) was an English company which
    owned and operated a goldmine in the Transvaal, part of the South African Republic (“the
    Republic”). In October 1899, quantities of gold owned by the company were seized by the
    government of the Republic for safe keeping. Later in the same month, a state of war was
    declared between Great Britain and the Republic which culminated in the conquest and
    annexation of the Republic by Great Britain in September 1900.

    In the present proceedings, the company sought to establish that the British government was
    liable to return to the company the gold seized by the Republic (an entity which had ceased to
    exist) or its value (£3,804).

    Disposition

    Under customary international law, Great Britain, as the state which had conquered and
    annexed the Republic, had not, in the absence of express stipulation, succeeded to the
    obligation owed by the Republic to the company to return the seized gold or its value. In
    other words, under principles of state succession forming part of customary international law,
    a conquering state does not become liable to discharge the financial obligations of the
    conquered state unless the conquering state has agreed expressly to do so. Accordingly, in
    the present case, the company’s claim against the British government by petition of right
    failed.

    Judgment extract

    In reaching this conclusion, LORD ALVERSTONE CJ (with whom Wills and Kennedy JJ
    agreed) made the following observations on the relationship between public international law
    and municipal law:

    [406]The…proposition…that international law forms part of the law of England, requires a word
    of explanation and comment. It is quite true that whatever has received the common consent of
    civilized nations must have received the assent of our country, and that to [407] which we have
    assented along with other nations in general may properly be called international law, and as such
    will be acknowledged and applied by our municipal tribunals when legitimate occasion arises for
    those tribunals to decide questions to which doctrines of international law may be relevant. But
    any doctrine so invoked must be one really accepted as binding between nations, and the
    international law sought to be applied must, like anything else, be proved by satisfactory
    evidence, which must show either that the particular proposition put forward has been recognised
    2

    and acted upon by our own country, or that it is of such a nature, and has been so widely and
    generally accepted, that it can hardly be supposed that any civilized State would repudiate it. The
    mere opinions of jurists, however eminent or learned, that it ought to be so recognised, are not in
    themselves sufficient. They must have received the express sanction of international agreement, or
    gradually have grown to be part of international law by their frequent practical recognition in
    dealings between various nations. …

    Judgment for the Crown

    ________________________

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