detto decreto una dichiarazione di illegittimità delprovvedimento di requisizione",i.e., "who regarded the [Prefect's] decree as a declaration of the unlawfulness of the requisition order". The Court of Appeal understood the lower court as meaning simply that "ivizi delprovvedimento di requisizione, rilevati da1 Prefetto, sono vizi di merito e non vizi di legittimità': i.e., "the defects found by the Prefect in the requisition order were defects in respect of the merits and not defects in respect of lawfulness"; it found that this finding was incorrect because the reasoning of the Prefect was, in its view, a clear finding of "un tipico caso di eccesso dipotere, che è, come è noto, un vizio di legittimità dell'atto amministrativo", Le., "a typical case of excess of power, which is of course a defect in respect of lawfulness of an administrative act". Having reached this conclusion, the Court of Appeal refers later in its judgment to the requisition as having been "unlawful" ("illecito").The analysis of the Prefect's decision as a finding of excess of power, with the result that the order was subject to a defect of lawfulness does not, in the Chamber's view, necessarily and in itself signify any view by the Prefect, or by the Court of Appeal of Palermo, that the Mayor's act was unreasonable or arbitrary. 128. Arbitrariness is not so much something opposed to a rule of law, as something opposed to the rule of law. This idea was expressed by the Court in the Asylum case, when it spoke of "arbitrary action" being "substituted for the rule of law" (Asylum,Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1950, p. 284). It is a wilful disregard of due process of law, an act which shocks, or at least surprises, a sense of juridical propriety. Nothing in the decision of the Prefect, or in the judgment of the Court of Appeal of Palermo, conveys any indication that the requisition order of the Mayor was to be regarded in that light. 129. The United States argument is not of course based solely on the findings of the Prefect or of the local courts. United States counsel felt able to describe the requisition generally as being an "unreasonable or capricious exercise of authority". Yet one must remember the situation in Palermo at the moment of the requisition, with the threatened sudden unemployment of some 800 workers atone factory. It cannot be said to have been unreasonable or merely capricious for the Mayor to seek to use the powers conferred on him by the law in an attempt to do something about a difficult and distressing situation. Moreover, if one looks at the requisition order itself, one finds an instrument which in its terms recites not only the reasons for its being made but also the provisions of the law on which it is based: one finds that, although later annulled by the Prefect because "the intended purpose of the requisition could not in practice be achieved by the order itself" (paragraph 125 above), it was nonetheless within the competence of the Mayor of Palermo, according to the very provisions of the law cited in it; one finds the Court of Appeal of Palermo, which did not differ from the conclusion that the requisition was intra vires, ruling that it was unlawful as falling into the recognized category of administrative law of acts of "eccessodipotere". Furthermore, here was an act belong-