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12 - The Law of State Responsibility: A Period of Great Advances

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2025

By
Paolo Palchetti
General editor
Randall Lesaffer
Edited by
Robert Kolb  and
Momchil Milanov
Randall Lesaffer
Affiliation:
KU Leuven and Tilburg University
Robert Kolb
Affiliation:
Université de Genève
Momchil Milanov
Affiliation:
International Court of Justice
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Summary

If, at the beginning of the twentieth century, thanks also to the influential works of Triepel and Anzilotti, the law of state responsibility came to be regarded as a distinct field, it was only in the period between the two world wars that this area of international law became the object of an intense scientific debate. The present contribution aims to assess the development of the law of state responsibility until 1945 by focusing on the events that provided a major impulse for this development, on the attempt at codification, on the case law of international courts and tribunals, and on the new general theories developed by authors such as Strupp, Kelsen, Lauterpacht, Eagleton and Ago. While the contribution aims to deal comprehensively with the law of state responsibility and its development in the period under consideration, particular emphasis will be placed on three issues: the problems associated with attribution of wrongful conduct; the consequences of international responsibility, and in particular the debate over the role of sanctions against wrongful conduct – the early signs of the emergence of a multilateral dimension of state responsibility.

Keywords

state responsibilityPCIJcodificationtreatment of aliensAnzilottiattribution
Type
Chapter
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The Cambridge History of International Law , pp. 362 - 389
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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References

Further Reading

Ago, Roberto, ‘Le délit international’, Recueil des cours, 68 (1939) 415–554.Google Scholar
Basdevant, Jules, ‘Règles générales du droit de la paix’, Recueil des cours, 58 (1936) 475–691.Google Scholar
Borchard, Edwin M., ‘“Responsibility of states” at the Hague Codification Conference’, American Journal of International Law, 24(30) (1930) 517–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bories, Clémentine, ‘The Hague Conference of 1930’ in Crawford, James, Pellet, Alain and Olleson, Simon (eds.), The Law of International Responsibility (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2010) 61–7.Google Scholar
Bourquin, Maurice, ‘Règles générales du droit de la paix’, Recueil des cours, 35 (1931) 1–228.Google Scholar
Cavaglieri, Arrigo, ‘Règles générales du droit de la paix’, Recueil des cours, 26 (1929) 311–586.Google Scholar
Crawford, James, State Responsibility. The General Part (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2013) 3–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Visscher, Charles, ‘La responsabilité des États’ in Bibliotheca Visseriana (Leiden: Brill 1924) 89–119.Google Scholar
Decencière-Ferrandière, André, La responsabilité internationale des États à raison des dommages subis par des etrangers (Paris: Rousseau 1925).Google Scholar
Eagleton, Clyde, The Responsibility of States in International Law (New York: New York University Press 1928).Google Scholar
Guerrero, José Gustavo, ‘Questionnaire no. 4: responsibility of states for damage done in their territories to the person or property of foreigners’, American Journal of International Law (Supplement) 20 (1926) 176–203.Google Scholar
Kelsen, Hans, ‘Théorie du droit international public’, Recueil des cours, 42 (1932) 115–351.Google Scholar
Lauterpacht, Hersch, ‘General rules of the law of peace’ in International Law. Being the Collected Papers of Hersch Lauterpacht (ed. Lauterpacht, Elihu), vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1970), 383–407.Google Scholar
Lorca, Arnulf Becker, Mestizo International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2014) 305–27.Google Scholar
Matsui, Yoshiro, ‘The transformation of the law of state responsibility’, Thesaurus Acroasium, 20 (1993) 1–65.Google Scholar
Nolte, Georg, ‘From Dionisio Anzilotti to Roberto Ago: the classical international law of state responsibility and the traditional primacy of a bilateral conception of inter-state relations’, European Journal of International Law, 13 (2002) 1083–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Politis, Nicolas, ‘Le problème des limitations de la souveraineté et la théorie de l’abus des droits dans les rapports internationaux’, Recueil des cours, 6 (1925) 1–121.Google Scholar
Politis, Nicolas, Les nouvelles tendances du droit international (Paris: Hachette 1927).Google Scholar
Reuter, Paul, Le développement de l’ordre juridique international (Paris: Economica 1995), 377–403.Google Scholar
Strupp, Karl, Handbuch des Völkerrechts, vol. 3, part 4, Das völkerrechtliche Delikt (Berlin, Stuttgart and Leipzig: Verlag von W. Kohlhammer 1920).Google Scholar
Verdross, Alfred, ‘Règles générales du droit international de la paix’, Recueil des cours, 30 (1929) 271–518.Google Scholar

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