An inherent right to bring claims and seek remedies under international law

Just as the developments in international society relating to decentralization suggest the need for a centralized court to ensure the constitutional unity of such society, so too the process of globalization requires that participants in the system have adequate access to international dispute settlement. The significant participation of individuals and corporations in the global society creates a need for them to have access to dispute settlement, which thus far has been only a limited feature of the inter-state system.

The view that only states are subjects of international law is no longer sustainable either in theory or practice. The opposite view, that individuals are the sole subjects of international law, while perhaps more attractive as a matter of legal theory, has not found support in an international society where states and international organizations participate as entities endowed with international personality. It is no longer disputed that individuals have international personality and may be direct beneficiaries of rights, as well as have duties, under international law. But there is still a major unsettled question in respect of their capacity to exercise these rights and to be held responsible for their duties in the international legal system.

As has been pointed out, “[l]egal personality is an acknowledgement that an entity is capable of exercising certain rights and being subject to certain duties on its own account under a particular system of law.”