State Responsibility for COVID-19: Does International Contagion Constitute Transboundary Harm?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Sophie CAPICCHIANO YOUNG
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Significant Risk ◽  
International Community ◽  
The State ◽  
Direct Result ◽  
State Responsibility ◽  
Current Article ◽  
International Responsibility ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Do So

Abstract As the damage caused by COVID-19 has increased exponentially, so too has the insistence that China bears some international responsibility for the unquantifiable damage sustained as a direct result of the state having failed to contain the virus, and to notify the international community of its existence. Some have suggested that the international contagion of the virus may be classified as transboundary harm. The current article analyses the law of transboundary harm, and proposes a set of criteria based on treaty and precedent that may be relied on to properly classify an event as such. It concludes that it is not only incorrect to classify international contagion as transboundary harm, but that to do so would pose a significant risk to the position and treatment of the individual in international law.

Draft Convention on the International Responsibility of States for Injuries to Aliens

1961 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 548-584 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis B. Sohn ◽  
B. B. Baxter
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Draft Convention ◽  
International Responsibility ◽  
The Individual

1.A State is internationally responsible for an act or omission which, under international law, is wrongful, is attributable to that State, and causes an injury to an alien. A State which is responsible for such an act or omission has a duty to make reparation therefor to the injured alien or an alien claiming through him, or to the State entitled to present a claim on behalf of the individual claimant.2. (a)An alien is entitled to present an international claim under this Convention only after he has exhausted the local remedies provided by the State against which the claim is made.(b) A State is entitled to present a claim under this Convention only on behalf of a person who is its national, and only if the local remedies and any special international remedies provided by the State against which the claim is made have been exhausted.

scholarly journals STATE RESPONSIBILITY FOR MODERN SLAVERY: UNCOVERING AND BRIDGING THE GAP

2019 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 539-571 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippa Webb ◽  
Rosana Garciandia
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
International Community ◽  
The State ◽  
State Responsibility ◽  
State Involvement ◽  
Modern Slavery ◽  
Global Movement

AbstractInternational law prohibits slavery and slavery-like practices under treaties that have been in force for more than a century. Yet, contemporary forms of slavery are one of the prevailing challenges for the international community, with 40.3 million people in modern slavery on any given day in 2016. The State has been largely overlooked as a perpetrator or accomplice in the global movement to eradicate modern slavery. The hand of the State can however be found in contemporary cases of modern slavery. This article identifies five scenarios of State involvement in modern slavery and aims to uncover and bridge the responsibility gap.

scholarly journals Hecho ilícito internacional = International Wrongful Act

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 271
Author(s):  
Pietro Sferrazza Taibi
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
The State ◽  
State Responsibility ◽  
International Responsibility ◽  
International Law Commission ◽  
Constituent Elements ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Law Commission

Resumen: En este trabajo se abordará un análisis dogmático de la noción de hecho internacionalmente ilícito en el marco de la responsabilidad internacional del Estado. Sin duda, se trata de una noción clave, dado que su configuración en un caso concreto activa la funcionalidad del resto de los capítulos de la responsabilidad internacional del Estado. En este trabajo se explicará la incidencia que ha tenido la distinción entre normas primarias y normas secundarias para la construcción del concepto de hecho internacionalmente ilícito. Asimismo, se abordará un análisis de cada uno de los dos elementos constitutivos del hecho internacionalmente ilícito, a saber, la ilicitud y la imputabilidad.Palabras clave: Responsabilidad internacional del Estado, hecho internacionalmente ilícito, Comisión de Derecho Internacional, ilicitud, imputabilidad/atribución, normas primarias/normas secundariasAbstract: This paper will deal with a dogmatic analysis of the notion of internationally wrongful acts within the framework of the international responsibility of the State. Undoubtedly, this is a key notion, since its configuration in one case activates the functionality of the rest of the chapters of the State's international responsibility. The paper will explain the impact of the distinction between primary and secondary rules for the construction of the concept of internationally wrongful act. It will also address an analysis of each of the two constituent elements of the internationally wrongful act, namely, breach and attribution.Keywords: International State responsibility, internationally wrongful act, International Law Commission, breach, imputation/attribution, primary rules/secondary rules.

The paradox of state identification: de facto states, recognition, and the (re-)production of the international

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 241-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janis Grzybowski
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Social Order ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
State Identification ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Political Decisions ◽  
Do So

AbstractThe literature on de facto states challenges the conventional identification of states by legal recognition, proposing to identify states based on their effectiveness instead. Yet, as I argue in this paper, rather than turning the tables on recognition, the de facto state challenge ultimately reveals all state identification in International Relations and international law to be essentially indeterminate. This lacuna, I suggest, is not an accidental omission, but an expression of the foundational paradox of modern political order that is rooted in the intertwined ontology of the state system and the individual states constituting it, with each presupposing the other. As a result, the opposition between empirical facts, political decisions, and legal norms invoked in attempts to identify states cannot but remain irresolvable. This should not be regarded as a problem to be overcome, however, but as a source of social order. Although states cannot be substantively identified, any effort to do so in practice naturalizes the state as the very form through which we articulate and shape political claims, conflicts, and settlements. In performatively enacting states precisely at the contested margins, state identification thus both invokes and (re-)produces the statist international as the central imaginary of modern political order.

United States: Comments on the Draft Articles on State Responsibility

1998 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 468-487
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Law ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
State Responsibility ◽  
Customary International Law ◽  
International Responsibility ◽  
The Law

The United States agrees with the Commission that a statement of the law of state responsibility must provide guidance to states with respect to the following questions:When does an act of a state entail international responsibility? What actions are attributable to the state? What consequences flow from a state'sviolation of its international responsibility? Customary international law provides answers to these questions, but the Commission has in many instances not codified such norms but rather proposed new substantive rules. In particular, the sections on countermeasures, crimes, dispute settlement, and state injury contain provisions that are not supported by customary international law.

scholarly journals The Nature of International Responsibility of States in the Contemporary World Arena

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 50
Author(s):  
Dawan Mohammed Jaza Abdullah
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Strict Liability ◽  
Central Place ◽  
The State ◽  
State Responsibility ◽  
International Convention ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
International Obligations ◽  
International Responsibility ◽  
International Law Commission

The subject of state responsibility occupies a central place in international law. Its basic principle, now well established, provides that every internationally wrongful act entails the responsibility of the state. One of the most controversial problems regarding the international responsibility of the state for wrongful acts concerns the nature of such responsibility.  The present paper examines the nature of state responsibility for international wrongful acts under existing international law. It takes the view that the International Law Commission (ILC), in its Draft Articles on State Responsibility can be applied in case of breach of any international obligations by states because there is no international convention regarding state responsibility on the international plane. Finally, the study concludes that the identification of the nature of the state responsibility seems to be much more complicated since ILC’s Articles do not explicitly address the issue of whether responsibility of state for wrongful act or omission is strict liability (objective theory) or there must be some fault (subjective theory) in the conduct of state in order to hold responsibility; customary international law to some extent does not help in filling the gap exists in ILC’s Draft Articles on state responsibility with regard to objective and subjective theories because  it supports both theories.

Hobbes among the Classic Jurists

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Boucher
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
Complete Identification ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Hedley Bull ◽  
Hans Morgenthau

The classic foundational status that Hobbes has been afforded by contemporary international relations theorists is largely the work of Hans Morgenthau, Martin Wight, and Hedley Bull. They were not unaware that they were to some extent creating a convenient fiction, an emblematic realist, a shorthand for all of the features encapsulated in the term. The detachment of international law from the law of nature by nineteenth-century positivists opened Hobbes up, even among international jurists, to be portrayed as almost exclusively a mechanistic theorist of absolute state sovereignty. If we are to endow him with a foundational place at all it is not because he was an uncompromising realist equating might with right, on the analogy of the state of nature, but instead to his complete identification of natural law with the law of nations. It was simply a matter of subject that distinguished them, the individual and the state.

Remarks by Sean D. Murphy

2020 ◽  
Vol 114 ◽  
pp. 193-199
Author(s):  
Sean D. Murphy ◽  
Claudio Grossman
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Human Rights Movement ◽  
Interstate System ◽  
International Human ◽  
The Individual

Our conversation might begin by looking backward a bit. The human rights movement from 1945 onward has been one of the signature accomplishments of the field of international law, one that refocused our attention from a largely interstate system to a system where the individual moved in from the periphery to the center. Human rights champions point to numerous landmark treaties, numerous institutions, and the rise of NGOs as a critical vehicle for developing and monitoring human rights rules. Yet others look at the international human right system and still see the state as overly central, tolerating and paying lip service to human rights, but too easily discarding them when they prove to be inconvenient. The persistence of racism comes to mind. As a general matter, how would you assess the strengths and weaknesses of the system that was built essentially during your lifetime?

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