Lotus Principle

The Lotus principle comes from the 1927 PCIJ judgment in the S.S. Lotus (France v Turkey): a collision on the high seas in which a French ship’s officer was prosecuted in Turkey after Turkish lives were lost. The Court held that restrictions on state sovereignty cannot be presumed, so Turkey could exercise jurisdiction absent a prohibitive rule. UNCLOS Article 97 later reversed the specific outcome, giving exclusive penal jurisdiction over a high-seas collision to the flag state or the state of the accused’s nationality, but the broader sovereignty presumption is still cited.