THE MORE the new reservation is looked at, the less
surprising it becomes that the Foreign Office was ashamed to tell Parliament about it. It• re- moves from the jurisdiction of the court any question `which in the opinion of the UK affects the national security of the UK, or any of its dependent territories.' Because of the reciprocity rule, this reservation can be used against us by any country that we wish to bring before the court. It seems therefore that we have made the International Court largely useless as a means of protecting British interests abroad. Indeed it is likely that the new reservation makes invalid the whole Declaration accepting the compulsory jurisdiction of the court. Most of the judges of the International Court have reserved their posi- tion on this point, but two of them (Lauterpacht and Guerrero) have expressed this view.
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