GET TO KNOW THE JAY TREATY OF ARBITRATION

GET TO KNOW THE JAY TREATY OF ARBITRATION

Jay Treaty of Arbitration, or as known as Jay Treaty or British Treaty, or London Treaty of 1794, is a ceasefire and trade agreement between the United States and Great Britain. Jay Treaty is an effort to stop unresolved issues between these two countries that have prolonged since the Treaty of Paris of 1783 that had been left unsettled since American independence. The prominent reason for this Treaty’s negotiation is tensions between the two countries after the American Revolutionary War. Even though the war had ended, the US still faced the economic crisis and tariffs from the trade deficit. The US’s trouble also included the Great Britain army that refused to withdraw from many forts within the US’s land, which stretched from The Great Lakes region to present-day Ohio.

                Key features of Jay Treaty

• Jay Treaty is a diplomatic agreement between the US and Great Britain.
• Jay Treaty’s purpose is to settle disputes between two nations that still existed after the Treaty of Paris of 1783, which was the end of the American Revolutionary War.
• The Treaty was signed on 19 November 1794, gained approval from the US Senate on 24 June 1795, and gained approval from the British parliament, thus came into force on 29 February 1796.
• The Treaty was named after the chief negotiator, John Jay, the US’s first Chief Justice.

                The Treaty achieved few US interests and granted Britain additional rights. The US obtained concessions, including the surrender of the northwestern posts (already agreed to in 1783) and a commercial treaty with Great Britain that granted the “most favored nation” status to the US. However, it seriously restricted the US commercial access to the British West Indies. Other problems, including the Canadian-Maine boundary, compensation for pre-revolutionary debts, and British seizures of American ships, were to be resolved by arbitration. The Treaty also conceded that the British could size US goods bound for France if they paid for them and could confiscate French goods on American ships without payment.[1]

                John Jay, the US’s first Chief Justice, negotiated Jay Treaty. Although the Treaty was unpopular among American citizens, the Senate voted on it with a 20 to 10 vote. President George Washington signed it on 19 November 1794, and the Senate approved it on 24 June 1795. British parliament ratified the Treaty, which ultimately enforced Treaty on 29 February 1796. President Washington carried out the Treaty despite the public’s disapproval, realizing the upcoming peace and giving the US valuable time to consolidate and rearm in a future conflict.[2] Most academics viewed the Treaty as initially “diplomatic failure” or “bad negotiation.” Yet, they agreed that this Treaty succeeded in maintaining peace between the US and Great Britain and preserving US neutrality.[3] Moreover, this Treaty presented the US’s great effort to avoid long-term wars and instability because the US did not have a powerful navy and only had a small navy fleet. Nevertheless, the Treaty achieved the US wish for the Great Britain army to surrender the Northwest Territory posts that Great Britain previously refused to withdraw troops following the Treaty of Paris.

                Furthermore, Article III of the Jay Treaty also recognized the free passage right of Native Americans, American citizens, and Canadian citizens to cross the border of the US, Canada, and the lands under Great Britain territory for trade and commercial purposes. The US would later codify this right in Section 289 of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (as amended in 1965).[4]

                Even though the Treaty was not very popular among Americans, the Treaty had successfully brought the peace between the US and Great Britain and preserved US neutrality.[5] Significantly, the arbitration under Jay Treaty is considered to be the starting point of present-day international adjudication.[6] It established that the international judicial organs were entitled to vote by a majority, determine their jurisdiction, and settle international disputes on the basis of international law.[7] Through the legal dimension, interstate arbitration allows state parties to submit legal questions to an arbitral tribunal and present arguments grounded in law. However, it can be concluded that the arbitration conceived under the Jay Treaty served the purpose of being an “alternative” to judicial settlement[8] rather than court proceedings.

                It has been over 200 years since the conception of the Jay Treaty. The US and other countries have employed international arbitration to resolve various disputes and prevent the violence from escalating, including disputes on sea vessels, environmental and pollution issues, diplomatic crises, and territorial boundary disputes. Therefore, Jay Treaty between the US and Great Britain was deemed the beginning of the “modern era” of international dispute resolution.

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[1] Office of the Historian. John Jay’s Treaty, 1794–95. Department of State United State of America. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1784-1800/jay-treaty

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 and as amended in 1965

[5] Ibid.

[6] Georg Schwarzenberger, Present-Day Relevance of the Jay Treaty Arbitrations, 53 Notre Dame L. Rev. 715 (1978). Available at: http://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndlr/vol53/iss4/3

[7] Ibid.

[8] Meshel, Tamar, 225 Years to the Jay Treaty: Interstate Arbitration Between Progress and Stagnation (March 26, 2019). This Article originally appeared in 3:1 Cardozo International Comparative, Policy & Ethics Law Review 1 (2020), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3360188 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3360188

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