Chapter 7 sets out the key components of State responsibility under international law and then uses a series of case studies to demonstrate that responsibility in practice. Responsibility for a State’s negligent failure to prevent a terrorist attack looks at the acts and omissions of the Russian authorities with respect to the school siege at Beslan in 2003. Three cases have been chosen to exemplify the direct perpetration of terrorism by a State. The first case is the bombing by French agents of the Greenpeace boat, Rainbow Warrior, by French agents in New Zealand in 1985. The second involves certain acts of Syrian authorities following the protests related to the Arab Spring, in particular the widespread and systematic torture and summary execution of opponents of the regime. The third case is the conduct of Russian forces in Ukraine following its invasion on 24 February 2022. Examples of State responsibility as accomplices to acts of terrorism are the responsibility of Liberia for the actions of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in neighbouring Sierra Leone during the civil war and the potential responsibility of Syria for the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafik Hariri, in Beirut on 14 February 2005.

This chapter explores how the interpretation of customary international law (CIL) can be shaped by the underlying premises and political values of a system. The argument it develops focuses on how investor–state arbitration has interpreted the CIL law rule establishing that the actions of state-owned enterprises will be attributed to the controlling state, as expressed in Article 8 of the Articles on the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts.

This chapter provides a detailed account of the impact that the Commission’s work has had in shaping the Court’s case-law. In addition to surveying and classifying all those instances in which the Court has to date been ready to refer expressly to the Commission’s output, the chapter demonstrates that reliance on the Commission’s work has often been more implicit. The question is then posed as to the basis for such recourse and the advantage afforded by it.

This chapter addresses in detail those rare occasions in which the Court and the Commission have adopted differing positions on the legal questions before them. In exploring both the potential for such disagreements and how they have been handled, the chapter shows that these instances attest to the strength of the inter-institutional relationship rather than undermine it. It also points out, however, that harmony comes at a cost.

This chapter examines the unparalleled influence that the Court’s decisions have had on the Commission’s codification and progressive development of areas of the law under its consideration. It illustrates not only the great extent to which many of the Commission’s propositions have borrowed their authority from the pronouncements of the Court, but also the significant impact of the latter on the Commission’s choices concerning terminology and programme of work. The chapter further demonstrates the Commission’s conscious efforts to support the Court’s cause more broadly, including by encouraging the expansion of the Court’s jurisdiction and by promoting the doctrine of the sources of international law enshrined in its Statute.

This Chapter focuses on governmental use of private military and security companies (PMSCs) to evade the law of state responsibility, using offering as a case study of Russia’s deployment of a shadowy corporation known as the Wagner Group as a case study. The cChapter then suggests ways in which we might rethink the law of state responsibility in order to respond to the increasing threat of this sort of hybrid warfare. Drawing from scholarship on global legal pluralism, the cChapter argues for a less formalist and more functionalist analysis of the law of state responsibility. I I n the context of hybrid war, formalist conceptions of the state allow governments such as Russia to skirt state responsibility solely because there may be no formal contract between Russia and a PMSC such as the Wagner Group. One possible response then is to reinterpret Article 8 of the Articles of State Responsibility so that it looks at the real functional ties between a state actor and a PMSC, along with the “governmentality” of the function the PMSC performs.

As state ownership of private firms grows, morphs, and globalizes, states increasingly channel their influence through the financialized markets. The ensuing merger of the state’s commercial and sovereign roles suggests that state ownership is, again, becoming a vector of sovereign authority. This chapter analyzes the international legal system that has developed around surging state ownership. It suggests that the legal construction of distinctive “shareholder identities” in international economic law plays a key role in this complex regulatory matrix. Specifically, the chapter focuses on how arbitral tribunals adjudicating claims arising from international investment treaties use attribution, a doctrine of customary international law, in creating, maintaining, and disciplining state shareholders. Arbitral tribunals use the analytical category of the state shareholder in order to delineate and construct state and company identities and to understand the economic, political, and legal implications of those identities in the the global economy. Accordingly, the interactions between substantive international economic law and the law of state responsibility form important, but underappreciated, elements of this constitutive process, which comes to affect the institutional design of state shareholding and disincentivize hands-on control over state-owned entities.

This volume offers a new point of entry into enduring questions about how the law conceives of states and firms. Because states and firms are fictitious constructs rather than products of evolutionary biology, the law dictates which acts should be attributed to each entity, and by which actors. Those legal decisions construct firms and states by attributing identity and consequences to them. As the volume shows, these legal decisions are often products of path dependence or conceptual metaphors like “personhood” that have expanded beyond their original uses. Focusing on attribution allows the volume to consider together an array of questions about artificial entities that are usually divided into doctrinal siloes. These include questions about attribution of international legal responsibility to states and state-owned entities, transnational attribution of liabilities to firms, and attribution of identity rights to corporations. Taken together, the book highlights the artificiality of doctrines that construct firms and states, and therefore their susceptibility to change.

The Articles on State Responsibility for Internationally Wrongful Acts (‘ARSIWA’) constitute an experiment in international law-making. Unlike other successful projects of the International Law Commission (‘ILC’), such as its work on the law of treaties and diplomatic and consular relations, the ARSIWA have not yet led to the adoption of a multilateral treaty. Yet, their text is cited commonly as the authoritative statement of the law on state responsibility with investment tribunals being by far their most frequent users. This well-recorded paradox calls for a reflection on the ways in which investment tribunals make use of the ARSIWA. This chapter examines the methods which investment tribunals explicitly or implicitly employ when using the ARSIWA in order to determine the content of rules of general international law on state responsibility. The chapter then proceeds to critically assess these findings from two perspectives: the overarching aims of the law of state responsibility and the doctrine of sources of international law. The chapter synthesises these empirical and doctrinal insights into a proposal for a common framework for the use of ARSIWA.

In 1999, a Bangladeshi woman claimed she had been enslaved by the Second Secretary of the Bahrain Mission to the United Nations in New York City and his wife.1 After signing a contract, in which she agreed to work for their household as a domestic servant, she stated her passport was confiscated by the couple, and she was left to care for their children and perform household duties that held her in near involuntary servitude2 – akin to trafficking in persons. In response, the defendants claimed to be protected by diplomatic immunity that makes serving diplomats exempt from the jurisdiction of foreign courts. Although the case was eventually settled for an undisclosed amount of damages that the Bahrani couple paid to the domestic worker,3 in its statement of interest, the US Department of State categorically emphasized that serving diplomats and their family members hold immunity from suit in the United States for both official and private acts.

This chapter analyses the establishment, content and implementation of international environmental liability of the sponsoring State. First, it argues for a differentiation between State liability ex delicto and State responsibility and suggests to employ the former notion. Second, it points out the non-practicability of an application of the full reparation principle (restituto in integrum) for environmental damage and that liability of sponsoring State should be taken together with that of the contractor. Third, it argues that invocation of liability of the sponsoring State for environmental damage by the ISA is preferable to that by States (parties). As to liability of the ISA, it focuses on questions of whether and, if so, in what situations member States are held liable for the ISA. Based on analysis of the 2011 ILC Articles on Responsibility of International Organization, 1995 IDI Resolution and 2004 ILA Resolution, it finds out that there is a ‘no liability of member states’ rule which however allows for exceptions. It also discusses invocation of liability of the ISA.

The chapter examines the distinction between public and private cyberattacks and responses to them in domestic law (e.g. application of criminal law) and international law (e.g. self-defence and countermeasures). After describing the different purposes, nature, and effects of cyberattacks committed by public and private actors, it argues that the determination of whether a particular cyberattack is of a public or private nature should define how states respond to cybersecurity risks. It then argues that the existing domestic and international law frameworks regulating cyberattacks suffer from serious limitations and proposes a holistic approach for responding to cyberattacks, taking into account the difference between public and private cyberattacks.

Thus chapter discusses the basics of international responsibility, focusing mostly on states. It details how states can be held responsible, what the consequences thereof may be, and discusses the circumstances precluding wrongfulness. It further analyzes the responsibility of international organizations and of individuals under international law

In the concluding chapter, we take stock of the legal developments that are likely to shape the implementation and further development of liability rules and process in areas beyond national jurisdiction. We argue that the developments in relation to state obligations of due diligence, the widening scope of compensable damages and the potential for more inclusive rights of standing, as well as rights for states to take response measures in areas beyond national jurisdiction, provides a strengthened foundation for a more robust system of state responsibility for environmental harm in areas beyond national jurisdiction. In recognizing that the approaches to civil liability in areas beyond national jurisdiction remain underdeveloped, we examine the central challenges that remain, as well as some modest pathways towards stronger legal accountability for environmental harm in the global commons.

This chapter provides an overview of the different approaches taken by the international community to address liability from environmental harm and how these approaches respond to the unique legal and practical issues associated with areas beyond national jurisdiction. Since liability rules that affect the commons environment exist in both international and national legal systems, the discussion begins with an examination of state responsibility and unharmonized domestic liability, before discussing various approaches to harmonizing civil liability rules through treaties. The discussion of approaches to liability is framed by consideration of the various purposes that liability rules and processes serve in international environmental law.

This chapter offers an introduction into the composition of and the procedure before the European Court of Human Rights.The development and the various reforms of the current supervision system are briefly explained, just like the composition of the Court and the various formations in which it sits (Single Judges, Committees, Chambers and Grand Chamber). As the Court can only look into the merits of a case when an application is admissible, the various admissibility requirements are explained in some detail. In particular, attention is paid to the different jurisdictional requirements (ratione personae, ratione materiae, ratione temporis and ratione loci), such as the victim requirement and State responsibility. In addition, several material and formal admissiblity requirements are addressed. The chapter also explains the main elements of the procedure before the Court. It pays special attention the binding nature, contents and consequences of the Court’s decisions, judgments and advisory opinions. Finally, the system of the Committee of Ministers’ supervision on the execution of judgments is addressed.

To explain the law of state responsibility and diplomatic protection, it helps to distinguish between primary rules and secondary rules. The primary rules of international law provide that certain acts or omissions are unlawful – for example, the law on the use of force would be considered primary rules of international law, a breach of which would be an internationally wrongful act. When those primary rules are breached, it is the secondary rules – the law of state responsibility – that come into play, to determine inter alia the consequences of that initial wrongful act, whether the wrongful act was committed by a state (thereby entailing that state’s responsibility), and what action the ‘wronged state’ may take in reply. The rules on state responsibility cover wrongful acts committed against another state, as well as certain wrongful acts committed against nationals of the state, including corporations; the law of diplomatic protection solely concerns how a state may raise a claim against another state for a wrong committed against one of its nationals, rather than against the state itself.