Do Jus Cogens Norms Invalidate State Immunity? International Restorative Justice and Japanese War Compensation Cases

2016 ◽  
pp. 160-194
Keyword(s):  
Restorative Justice ◽  
State Immunity ◽  
Jus Cogens

State Immunity, Human Rights, and Jus Cogens: A Critique of the Normative Hierarchy Theory

2003 ◽  
Vol 97 (4) ◽  
pp. 741-781 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee M. Caplan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
General Circulation ◽  
Gulf War ◽  
Hierarchy Theory ◽  
State Prison ◽  
State Immunity ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Jus Cogens ◽  
Small Room

When Sulaiman Al-Adsani traveled from the United Kingdom to Kuwait to repel Saddam Hussein’s invasion in 1991, he never dreamed he would depart with bruises and burns inflicted by the very government he had sought to defend. According to Al-Adsani, his troubles began when he was accused of releasing sexual videotapes of Sheikh Jaber Al-Sabah Al-Saud Al-Sabah, a relative of the emir of Kuwait, into general circulation. After the first Gulf war, with the aid of government troops, the sheikh exacted his revenge by breaking into Al-Adsani’s house, beating him, and transporting him to a Kuwaiti state prison, where his beatings continued for days. Al-Adsani was subsequently taken at gunpoint in a government car to the palace of the emir’s brother, where his ordeal intensified. According to Al-Adsani, his head was repeatedly submerged in a swimming pool filled with corpses and his body was badly burned when he was forced into a small room where the sheikh set fire to gasoline-soaked mattresses.

scholarly journals State Immunity Before the International Court of Justice: Jurisdictional Immunities of the State (Germany v Italy)

2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew McMenamin
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
The State ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
International Court Of Justice ◽  
State Immunity ◽  
German Armed Forces ◽  
Court Of Justice ◽  
International Court ◽  
Jus Cogens

The International Court of Justice recently gave judgment in Jurisdictional Immunities of the State. The case concerned German state immunity from civil claims brought in Italian courts by victims of serious violations of international humanitarian law committed by German armed forces during World War II. The Court offered a valuable clarification of the relationship between state immunity and jus cogens norms at customary international law. The conservative reasoning was thorough and extensive and the decision is likely to ossify the evolution of state immunity.

State Immunity Jus Cogens

2006 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 437-446 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorna McGregor
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Working Group ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
State Immunity ◽  
Jus Cogens ◽  
International Law Commission ◽  
Law Commission

The General Assembly first proposed that the International Law Commission look into the issue of state immunity in 1977. As State immunity, by its very nature, sits at the interface between traditional and contemporary notions of international law, the span of the negotiations over three decades inevitably exposed the resulting Convention to gaps and inconsistencies with evolving areas of international law. In 1999 the International Law Commission established a Working Group on Jurisdictional immunities of States and their property,

La sentenza della Corte internazionale di giustizia relativa al caso Germania c. Italia: profili di diritto intertemporale

2012 ◽  
pp. 335-349
Author(s):  
Fabrizio Marongiu Buonaiuti
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
International Law ◽  
The State ◽  
State Responsibility ◽  
World War ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
State Immunity ◽  
The Icj ◽  
The Law ◽  
Jus Cogens

The author comments on the judgment delivered by the ICJ on 3rd February 2012 in the case of Germany v. Italy, concerning jurisdictional immunity of the State against actions for compensation in respect of crimes committed during World War II. The article focuses on the intertemporal law aspects of the case, commenting that the ICJ, while correctly identifying State immunity rules as having a procedural nature, failed in clarifying that whenever their application requires a qualification of the relevant facts, this is to be performed pursuant to the law in force at the time they were committed. Arguably, at the time of the conflict, the category of jus cogens norms had not yet been sufficiently established, nor had a special regime of State responsibility for international crimes or for serious breaches of peremptory rules of general international law developed yet. Therefore, the supposed prevalence of the breached norms on State immunity rules, which the ICJ has correctly excluded due to the different nature of either set of rules, arguably was to be excluded for intertemporal reasons altogether.

Jus CogensafterGermanyv.Italy: Substantive and Procedural Rules Distinguished

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 979-1002 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEFAN TALMON
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Limited Effect ◽  
State Immunity ◽  
The Icj ◽  
Jus Cogens ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractIn the case concerningJurisdictional Immunities of the State, the ICJ held that rules ofjus cogensdid not automatically displace hierarchically lower rules of state immunity. The Court's decision was based on the rationale that there was no conflict between these rules as the former were substantive rules while the latter were procedural in character. The ‘substantive–procedural’ distinction has been heavily criticized in the literature. Much of the criticism seems to be motivated by the unwanted result of the distinction, namely de facto impunity for the most serious human rights violations. This paper takes a step back from the alleged antinomy of human rights and state immunity and broadens the picture by looking at the relationship between substantive and procedural rules more generally. It is shown that substantive rules of ajus cogenscharacter generally leave procedural rules unaffected and, in particular, do not automatically override such rules. Substantive rules may, however, have a limited effect upon the interpretation and application of procedural rules. It is argued that the ‘substantive–procedural’ distinction is well established in international law and makes eminent sense even when substantive rules ofjus cogensand procedural rules of immunity are involved.

Jus Cogensvs. State Immunity, Round Two: The Decision of the European Court of Human Rights in theKalogeropoulou et al. v. Greece and GermanyDecision

2003 ◽  
Vol 4 (5) ◽  
pp. 477-491 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerstin Bartsch ◽  
Björn Elberling
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Sovereign Immunity ◽  
State Immunity ◽  
European Court ◽  
Jus Cogens ◽  
Second World ◽  
Judicial Treatment

On 12 December 2002, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) declared inadmissible an application filed against Greece and Germany by 257 victims and relatives of victims of Nazi war crimes committed in Greece in 1944. This decision was not only the latest of a number of ECHR decisions concerning the judicial treatment of Nazi war crimes committed during the Second World War, but it also marked the second time that the Court had to deal with the question of whether states may rely on sovereign immunity in cases concerning breaches of peremptory and non-derogablejus cogensnorms.

State Immunity, State Atrocities, and Civil Justice in the Modern Era of International Law

2008 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 223-270
Author(s):  
Chile Eboe-Osuji
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
National Court ◽  
Commercial Activities ◽  
State Immunity ◽  
European Court ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
Peremptory Norm ◽  
The Face ◽  
Jus Cogens

SummaryThe exercise of civil jurisdiction by a national court over a foreign sovereign has been a perennial source of controversy in international relations. It resulted in the development of the doctrine of state immunity, founded on the notion of the comity of nations. The doctrine at some point was considered an absolute rule. With time, exceptions to the rule were accepted, notably in the area of commercial activities. In recent times, there has been a movement to recognize a further exception involving violation of jus cogens norms in order to limit the tendency of certain state agents to engage in gross violations of human rights and humanitarian norms. Yet this movement has encountered strong resistance. The resistance is apparent in three decisions rendered respectively by the European Court of Human Rights, the Ontario Court of Appeal, and the British House of Lords. In this article, it is contended first that the resistance noted in these cases is largely founded on fundamental misconceptions. It is further contended that the comity of nations is no longer sustainable as a rational basis for the doctrine of state immunity, especially in the face of jus cogens as a peremptory norm of international law.

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