A distinction, associated with the name of Westlake, has been drawn between legal and political international disputes, and this terminology appears to have found its way into the text-books. It formed the basis of the project for obligatory arbitration put forward by the Russian delegates at the First Hague Conference. At the present day, however, not only are the terms frequently employed in different senses, but there is considerable difference of opinion as to the utility of drawing such a distinction at all. A discussion of the question before an assembly of eminent American jurists resulted in the expression of many widely divergent views, and their deliberations indicate a notable absence of agreement both on this topic and on the closely related question of the basis of arbitration. Yet the whole question is one of fundamental importance, and so far from being a matter of merely academic interest, it has a direct practical bearing on any scheme for the extension of the principle of compulsory arbitration. The question of the justiciable character of disputes is an inevitable result of the movement in recent years in favor of general treaties of arbitration, providing for disputes of the future. It is notorious that the Second Hague Conference failed to solve the problem by an attempt to draw up “ arbitrable lists” of disputes, and it is doubtful whether a very satisfactory solution has been found by the more general definition of disputes of a legal nature laid down by Article 36 of the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice.