The Court's mandatory jurisdiction came from three sources: the Optional Clause of the League of Nations, general international conventions and special bipartite international treaties. Cases could also be submitted directly by states, but they were not bound to submit material unless it fell into those three categories. The Court could issue either judgments or advisory opinions. Judgments were directly binding but not advisory opinions. In practice, member states of the League of Nations followed advisory opinions anyway for fear of possibly undermining the moral and legal authority of the Court and the League.