Overview:
A collision occurred on the high seas between a French vessel and a Turkish vessel. Victims were Turkish nationals and the alleged offender was French. Could Turkey exercise its jurisdiction over this French national under international law?

Facts of the Case:
A collision occurred on the high seas between a French vessel – Lotus – and a Turkish vessel – Boz-Kourt. The Boz-Kourt sank and killed eight Turkish nationals on board the Turkish vessel. The 10 survivors of the Boz-Kourt (including its captain) were taken to Turkey on board the Lotus. In Turkey, the officer on watch of the Lotus (Demons), and the captain of the Turkish ship were charged with manslaughter. Demons, a French national, was sentenced to 80 days of imprisonment and a fine. The French government protested, demanding the release of Demons or the transfer of his case to the French Courts. Turkey and France agreed to refer this dispute on the jurisdiction to the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ).
Questions before the Court:
Did Turkey violate international law when Turkish courts exercised jurisdiction over a crime committed by a French national, outside Turkey? If yes, should Turkey pay compensation to France?
The Court’s Decision:
Turkey, by instituting criminal proceedings against Demons, did not violate international law.
Relevant Findings of the Court:
Establishing Jurisdiction: Does Turkey need to support its assertion of jurisdiction using an existing rule of international law or is the mere absence of a prohibition preventing the exercise of jurisdiction enough?
The first principle of the Lotus Case: A State cannot exercise its jurisdiction outside its territory unless an international treaty or customary law permits it to do so. This is what we called the first principle of the Lotus Case. The Court held that:
“Now the first and foremost restriction imposed by international law upon a State is that – failing the existence of a permissive rule to the contrary – it may not exercise its power in any form in the territory of another State. In this sense jurisdiction is certainly territorial; it cannot be exercised by a State outside its territory except by virtue of a permissive rule derived from international custom or from a convention.” (para 45)
The second principle of the Lotus Case: Within its territory, a State may exercise its jurisdiction, in any matter, even if there is no specific rule of international law permitting it to do so. In these instances, States have a wide measure of discretion, which is only limited by the prohibitive rules of international law.The Court held that:
“It does not, however, follow that international law prohibits a State from exercising jurisdiction in its own territory, in respect of any case which relates to acts which have taken place abroad, and in which it cannot rely on some permissive rule of international law. Such a view would only be tenable if international law contained a general prohibition to States to extend the application of their laws and the jurisdiction of their courts to persons, property and acts outside their territory, and if, as an exception to this general prohibition, it allowed States to do so in certain specific cases. But this is certainly not the case under international law as it stands at present. Far from laying down a general prohibition to the effect that States may not extend the application of their laws and the jurisdiction of their courts to persons, property and acts outside their territory, it leaves them in this respect a wide measure of discretion, which is only limited in certain cases by prohibitive rules; as regards other cases, every State remains free to adopt the principles which it regards as best and most suitable. This discretion left to States by international law explains the great variety of rules which they have been able to adopt without objections or complaints on the part of other States …In these circumstances all that can be required of a State is that it should not overstep the limits which international law places upon its jurisdiction; within these limits, its title to exercise jurisdiction rests in its sovereignty.” (paras 46 and 47)
This applied to civil and criminal cases. If the existence of a specific rule was a pre-requisite to exercise jurisdiction, the Court argued, then “it would…in many cases result in paralysing the action of the courts, owing to the impossibility of citing a universally accepted rule on which to support the exercise of their [States’] jurisdiction” (para 48).
The Court based this finding on the sovereign will of States. It held that:
“International law governs relations between independent States. The rules of law binding upon States therefor emanate from their own free will as expressed in conventions or by usages generally accepted as expressing principles of law and established in order to regulate the relations between these co-existing independent communities or with a view to the achievement of common aims. Restrictions upon the independence of States cannot therefore be presumed”.

Criminal Jurisdiction: Territorial Jurisdiction
France alleged that the flag State of a vessel has exclusive jurisdiction over offences committed on board the ship in high seas. The Court disagreed. It held that France, as the flag State, did not enjoy exclusive territorial jurisdiction in the high seas in respect of a collision with a vessel carrying the flag of another State (paras 71 – 84). The Court held that Turkey and France both have jurisdiction in respect of the whole incident: in other words, there was concurrent jurisdiction.
The Court held that a ship in the high seas is assimilated to the territory of the flag State. This State may exercise its jurisdiction over the ship, in the same way as it exercises its jurisdiction over its land, to the exclusion of all other States. In this case, the Court equated the Turkish vessel to Turkish territory. The Court held that the “… offence produced its effects on the Turkish vessel and consequently in a place assimilated to Turkish territory in which the application of Turkish criminal law cannot be challenged, even in regard to offences committed there by foreigners.” The Court concluded that Turkey had jurisdiction over this case. It further said:
“If, therefore, a guilty act committed on the high seas produces its effects on a vessel flying another flag or in foreign territory, the same principles must be applied as if the territories of two different States were concerned, and the conclusion must therefore be drawn that there is no rule of international law prohibiting the State to which the ship on which the effects of the offence have taken place belongs, from regarding the offence as having been committed in its territory and prosecuting, accordingly, the delinquent.”
The Lotus Case is also significant in that the Court said that a State would have territorial jurisdiction, even if the crime was committed outside its territory, so long as a constitutive element of the crime was committed in that State. Today, we call this subjective territorial jurisdiction. In order for subjective territorial jurisdiction to be established, one must prove that the element of the crime and the actual crime are entirely inseparable: in other words, if the constituent element was absent – the crime would not have happened. The Court said:
“The offence for which Lieutenant Demons appears to have been prosecuted was an act – of negligence or imprudence – having its origin on board the Lotus, whilst its effects made themselves felt on board the Boz-Kourt. These two elements are, legally, entirely inseparable, so much so that their separation renders the offence non-existent… It is only natural that each should be able to exercise jurisdiction and to do so in respect of the incident as a whole. It is therefore a case of concurrent jurisdiction.”
Customary International Law
The Lotus case gave an important dictum on creating customary international law. France had alleged that jurisdictional questions on collision cases are rarely heard in criminal cases, because States tend to prosecute only before the flag State. France argued that this absence of prosecutions points to a positive rule in customary law on collisions.The Court disagreed and held that, this:
“…would merely show that States had often, in practice, abstained from instituting criminal proceedings, and not that they recognized themselves as being obliged to do so; for only if such abstention were based on their being conscious of having a duty to abstain would it be possible to speak of an international custom. The alleged fact does not allow one to infer that States have been conscious of having such a duty; on the other hand, as will presently be seen, there are other circumstances calculated to show that the contrary is true.”
In other words, opinio juris is reflected not only in acts of States (Nicaragua Case), but also in omissions when those omissions are made following a belief that the said State is obligated by law to refrain from acting in a particular way. (For more on opinio juris click here)
Subsequent ICJ Decisions and Separate Opinions That Referred to Principles of the Lotus Case
Advisory Opinion on the Unilateral Declaration of Kosovo (2010)
In the Kosovo Advisory Opinion the Court had to decide if the unilateral declaration of Kosovo of February 2008 was ‘in accordance with’ international law. The Court inquired and concluded that the applicable international law did not prohibit an unilateral declaration of independence. Based on this finding, the Court decided that ‘the adoption of the declaration of independence did not… violate any applicable rule of international law’.
Judge Simma disagreed, inter alia, with Court’s methodology in arriving at this conclusion. He imputed the method to the principle established in the Lotus case: that which is not prohibited is permitted under international law. He criticised the Lotus dictum as an out dated, 19th century positivist approach that is excessively differential towards State consent. He said that the Court should have considered the possibility that international law can be deliberately neutral or silent on the international lawfulness of certain acts. Instead of concluding that an the absence of prohibition ipso facto meant that a unilateral declaration of independence is permitted under international law, the Court should have inquired whether under certain conditions international law permits or tolerates unilateral declarations of independence.