Excerpt from Arbitration Before the Honorable Edward D. White, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, of the Differences Between the Republic of Panama, And, the Republic of Costa Rica
It is curious circumstance, and one which may well cause doubt as to the serious ness of the Argument which we are considering, that the treatment of the question which Costa Rica there attempts to make fundamental, is so summary. The Argu ment is, indeed, voluminous, but a great part of it is taken up with the attempt to dissuade the Arbitrator from following the Loubet Award - the only thing he was asked or has consented to do.
If it were possible for such an attempt to succeed and if it were conceivable that the Arbitrator should be willing to do as Costa Rica wishes and fix a boundary with out regard to the Loubet Award, then he would have to consider de novo, the same question which President Loubet decided. Volumes were required to contain the arguments, and vast accumulations of documents and maps to furnish the proofs which Costa Rica thought it necessary to adduce before President Loubet. Here she submits some of these volumes of argument, which failed to convince President Loubet before, and some of the former maps and documents. Perhaps she produces them all (for Panama is not in a position to know what was presented to President Loubet). If she has done so she presents only what failed to satisfy him of the justice of her claims and her new argument upon this subject, long as it is, is but a fraction of one volume of the former arguments. It is apparent that, if Costa Rica expected the present Arbitrator to reverse the decision of President Loubet and reach a different result, she would have felt it necessary to produce more proof and more elaborate argument than she produced before. If, when there was no' decision against her, so much was requlred, certainly far more would be required to induce an Arbitrator to reverse a decision, solemnly made after long study and examination. But substantially no more has been produced.
This appears to us to show that, conscious of the fact that the present Arbitrator could not and would not depart from the Loubet Award and select another line than that designated therein, Costa Rica has never expected any such result. Her argument is not intended to convince nor to win an award. It is a mere form of argument which it was not worth while to elaborate, and its Only real office is to cover the nakedness of Costa Rica's indefensible refusal to accept the Loubet Award.
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