2015
International law presently addresses the unique challenge to international peace and security posed by trans-national terrorism through two frameworks of responsibility: first, individual criminal responsibility; second, state responsibility. These two frameworks of responsibility are not mutually exclusive and this article … Read more
28 October 2014
Forthcoming in International and Comparative Law Quarterly (2015)
Jean d’Aspremont[1]
State responsibility is one of these foundational doctrines that give shape to international law as much as it gives it teeth. State responsibility provides a conceptual framework through which inadmissible behaviours are constructed, captured and acknowledged while also endowing international law with reactionary mechanisms against those behaviours deemed unacceptable. In that sense, state responsibility is both a screen where standards about what is admissible at the international level are projected as much a parapet from which respect of those standards can be defended. Needless to say that such a twofold functional view of state responsibility is all but ontological. It is the result of certain choices made by international lawyers as well as the socio-historical circumstances in which such choices were made. (more…)
1 November 2013
The International Law Commission (ILC), in its sixty-fifth session (2013) decided to include in its programme a topic entitled ‘Protection of the Atmosphere’ (see here para. 168). The ILC appointed as a Special Rapporteur Mr. Shinya Murase.
The inclusion of the topic is a very interesting development. It is the second topic pertaining to environmental law (the other being ‘Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflicts’) currently under consideration by the ILC. It is also a very difficult topic, given the number of conventions, both successful and unsuccessful ones, that have been so far concluded, the body of academic output on issues of atmospheric pollution and the strong political pull on the issue. (more…)
2012
International adjudication is a small, but not irrelevant, component in the complex international governance structure through which states and other actors seek to deliver global public goods. This article explores the plurality of connections between the procedural law of international … Read more