Abstract :
[en] During the first half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, Western powers promoted ‘mixed courts’ as an alternative to consular jurisdiction in non-Western countries. Unlike ordinary local courts, mixed courts were composed partly or entirely of foreign judges and applied Western or Western-inspired procedural and substantial rules. Unlike consular courts, they were considered as an integral part of the legal order of the host polity, which could be a fully sovereign state, a protectorate, a mandate, or a condominium. Moreover, in contrast to earlier mixed courts, which had been a common occurrence in multiethnic empires marked by legal pluralism and the reliance on personal rather than territorial jurisdiction (including China), the mixed courts created during the 19th and early 20th century were widely perceived as an exceptional and ultimately transitory limitation on the territorial sovereignty of the host polity.
Although colonial mixed courts were created in many non-Western regions, including the Ottoman Empire, Chinese treaty ports, the International Zone of Tangier, the semi-independent Khedivate of Egypt, Middle Eastern A Mandates, the Kingdom of Siam and the Anglo-French Condominium of the New Hebrides, their jurisdiction varied widely. At least three of these courts had the power to compensate foreigners for wrongful acts of the host state.
After providing a general overview over the all-but-forgotten phenomenon of colonial mixed courts, this paper will examine the compensation mechanisms provided to foreigners by some of these courts, and how they might have contributed to the emergence of international judges as guarantors of individual rights in the 20th century.
