holds that the Polish Government is mistaken in its opinion
that recourse may only be had to the Court for disputes
concerning Articles 64 to 71.
Article 38 of the Rules of Court is as follows :
"When proceedings are begun by means of an application,
any preliminary objection shall be filed after the
filing of the Case by the Applicant and within the time
fixed for the filing of the Counter-Case.
The document submitting the objection shall contain
a statement of facts and of law on which the plea is
based, a statement of conclusions and a list of the dot.uments in support ; these documents shall be attached ;
it shall mention the evidence which the Party may desire
to produce.
Upon receipt by the Registrar of the document submitting the objection, the Court, or the President if the
Court is not sitting, shall fix the time within which the
Party against whom the plea is directed may submit
a written statement of its observations and conclusions ;
documents in support shall be attached and evidence
which it is proposed to produce shall be mentioned.
Unless otherwise decided by the Court, the further
proceedings shall be oral. The provisions of paragraphs
4 and 5 of Article 69 of the Rules shall apply."
The object of this article was to lay down when an objection to
the jurisdiction may validly be filed, but only in cases where
the objection is submitted as a preliminary question, that is
to Say, when the Respondent asks for a decision upon the
objection before any subsequent proceedings on the merits.
I t is exclusively in this event that the article Iays down what
the procedure should be and that this procedure should be
different from that on the merits.
But it does not follow from this that an objection to the
jurisdiction which is not filed as a preliminary objection in
the sense indicated above, can be taken at any stage of the
proceedings.
The Court's jurisdiction depends on the wiil of the Parties.
The Court is always competent once the latter have accepted
its jurisdiction, since there is no dispute which States entitled
to appear before the Court cannot refer to it. Article 36 of