SETTLEMENT of such international disputes as the Anglo-Iranian oil crisis would be an easy matter if the World court carried the same authority national courts have in dealing with their own citizens.

There is a plausible case in the oil controversy. Britain is arguing that nationalization abrogated an international contract, and therefore violated international law. Iran is arguing that nationalization of oil was an inherent national right, that it was therefore an internal matter and that the World court has no jurisdiction.

Unfortunately there are no international statutes which nations are bound by basic agreement to accept. The World court therefore renders only an advisory opinion, which may have moral force, but certainly has no police force behind it.

Nor is it likely that an international court ever will get much police power. Nations have always followed the principle which Stephen Decatur once put into realistic words: [Famed U.S. naval hero in the War of 1812]

“Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong!”

Setting up an international court, of course, has to be done on a representative basis, and representatives will never stray very far from their individual governments’ wishes. Thus a legislative body such as the United Nations General Assembly becomes a more feasible judicial agency than a world court. It is impossible to isolate an international judiciary from international politics. And when politics enters jurisprudence it might as well become openly political rather than mask itself as judicial.

The court’s decision in the Anglo-Iranian case could circumscribe its own jurisdiction by refusing to hear the case as an internal matter. Or it could provide some measure of legal weight to British arguments before the U.N. Assembly. But the court has no injunction powers, and the U.N. Assembly has no seizure powers, which leaves the Iranian question strictly up to collective bargaining.