Say the ratio out loud before you open Reasoning — recalling it unprompted is exactly what the exam pays for.
Why it matters
Submission is the second and more important of the two grounds of international competence, because it is the one a party can walk into by accident. This case lists the three ways it happens.
Facts
This course cites the case for the forms submission takes and does not set out its facts.
Held
A defendant submits to the jurisdiction of a foreign court by suing there as plaintiff, by appearing and pleading on the merits, or by appealing.
Reasoning
Step one — why submission counts at all. The objection to a foreign court's jurisdiction is an objection to being subjected to it. A party who invokes the court, or who asks it to decide the dispute in his favour, is not being subjected to anything; he is using it.
Step two — each of the three is an invocation. Suing as plaintiff is obvious. Pleading to the merits asks the court to decide the case. Appealing asks a higher court of the same system to decide it again, which presupposes that the system was entitled to decide it at all.
Step three — the negative implication. What is not submission is an appearance that does none of these things: an appearance made only to contest jurisdiction.
Exam use
It opens: What amounts to submission to the jurisdiction of a foreign court? — give the three heads, then the limit.
The limit is Re Dulles' Settlements. The older cases distinguished according to whether property had already been seized; the modern position rejects that, on Lord Denning's reasoning that a man who has all the time been vigorously protesting that the court has no jurisdiction cannot fairly be said to have submitted voluntarily. The summary to carry is that to protest is not necessarily to submit.
Show the rule working in an Indian case. In British India Steam Navigation Co. v. Shanmugha Vilas Cashew Industries the bills of lading chose English law and English courts, yet the appellant was held to have submitted to the Indian court, no ground as to jurisdiction having been taken in the memorandum of appeal below or in the special leave petition. A jurisdiction clause is not self-executing: it must be pleaded, and pleaded at once, or it is lost.
Note the symmetry with immunity. Waiver of sovereign immunity may likewise be presumed from conduct — Kenya Airways v. Jinibai B. Keshwala — and the English State Immunity Act 1978 withholds immunity where the State submits.
It does not decide whether a party who protests and then, having lost the point, defends on the merits has submitted; the course does not take the question further.