previously existing under the government of the enemy to continue
in the exercise of their functions as his temporary
representatives; or he can institute new tribunals of local
jurisdiction having the name and form of civil courts, and
proceeding according to the ordinary rules of administrative
justice. All such courts act really as his agents and subject to
his control, but in practice he seldom interferes with their
judgments. He cannot, however, in establishing such a temporary
tribunal, give it the powers of an admiralty court over prize
cases. The judgment _in rem_ of an admiralty court,
condemning a captured ship as a lawful prize of war, is treated
as conclusive all over the world; but this is because it is a
decree of a competent court, properly established to administer a
branch of maritime law which, in its main principles, is part of
the law of nations and common to the world. No mere military
court on enemy's territory occupies that position.[Footnote:
Jecker _v._ Montgomery, 13 Howard's Reports, 498, 515.]

This right of the military commander exists equally on foreign
territory in military occupation and on domestic territory, when
the ordinary courts of his country are not open. During our
Civil War, in 1864, President Lincoln, as commander in chief of
the army and navy, set up a "Provisional Court for the State of
Louisiana," after the Southern portion of that State had been
occupied by the national forces and martial law declared. Judge
Charles A. Peabody of New York, who had been a justice of the
Supreme Court of that State, was commissioned to hold it and to
dispose of both civil and criminal causes. Its docket became at
once a full one, and important litigation was transacted there
with general acceptance until the close of the war.[Footnote: The